"Oh, do tell me!"
"Well, I want it simply frightfully badly, so you must pray like anything. It's this." Kathleen drew a long breath. "You know Mother Monica takes the violin pupils? Well, I've written to ask my father if I may learn the violin next term, and there's just a chance he may say yes. Just think of having a whole hour's lesson with her once a week! I'm simply praying to everyone I can think of. St. Cecilia ought to get it for me, oughtn't she? as she's the patroness of music."
Zella looked at her in mute amazement. The convent perspective still had power to astonish her, and the sensation was so very evident in her face that Kathleen's own expression of hopeful eagerness changed, as she murmured hastily:
"Of course I forgot—I suppose it isn't exactly the same thing for you. You don't have saints in the Protestant Church, do you?"
It was not a question, Zella felt, but a statement of fact, and as such it humiliated her.
It was mortifying to know that even the smallest child in the school looked upon her with pity or curiosity as a "Protestant," and that the humblest lay Sister in the community doubtless thought it the merest act of common charity to murmur an occasional prayer for her conversion.
No one, however, endeavoured to lure her into the Fold, and there were times when Zella wearied heartily of this discretion, and thought that the Jesuitical intrigues predicted by Mrs. Lloyd-Evans would have been infinitely preferable to the continuance of this monotonously impersonal atmosphere.
The regularity of convent life was scarcely less trying to her than its detachment, and it was with proportionate eagerness that Zella looked forward to an event which apparently loomed enormous on the convent horizon.
This was spoken of as " Reverend Mother's Feast" by the children, and by the nuns, with a slightly emotional inflection, and even, in extreme cases, a moistened glance, as " Our dear Mother's Feast-day."
"What are you going to do for our dear Mother on her feast, children?" inquired Mother Veronica one evening at recreation. "I think it's time we began our spiritual bouquet."
In quality of her position as First Mistress, she habitually addressed the pupils as " we." She was not popular, and most of the girls instinctively resented it.
"That will give us a whole month," observed Mary McNeill with satisfaction. "We can get heaps of things done by that time. Doesn't Reverend Mother like acts of mortification best?"
"I've begun already," proudly announced Dorothy Brady, one of Reverend Mother's devotees. "I've done fourteen acts already."
The others looked impressed, and one or two appeared rather envious. Even Mother Veronica* remarked, with unusual cordiality:
"Well done, Dorothy! I like to hear that; it shows the right spirit, dear. Now, I've got a paper all ready here, and if I pin it up in the hall to-morrow you can all keep count on that."
"Oh, but, Mother," objected Kathleen, "then they'll all be added up together, and we shan't know who's done most. Do let's each keep count separately, and then give in the numbers at recreation some evening, and add them up all together, like we did last year."
Zella, to whom most of this conversation was almost incomprehensible, looked with great curiosity at the paper in Mother Veronica's hand. It was inscribed list-wise with various pious practices, and included such unfamiliar- terms as "Acts," "Ejaculatory Prayers," and even "Hours of Silence."
The whole was headed " Spiritual Bouquet."
She would have liked to ask the meaning of this remarkable collection, but was too much afraid of being thought as ignorant as she really was, and was glad that she had refrained, when Kathleen burst unasked into eager explanation:
"You see, we each put a stroke against whatever it is, as soon as we've done it; and if we each keep a separate list beside, every one'll know how much she's given. Last year that little kid Mollie Pearse actually had down one hundred and eighty-five ejaculations—and she was only seven then. Reverend Mother was most frightfully pleased when she heard about it. She liked it better than anything else."
"And had she really done them all?" asked Zella rather sceptically, and not absolutely certain what an "ejaculation " might be.
"Oh yes, rather! She did the last fifty straight off, all in one go, at recreation one night. It was too funny to see her, sitting in the corner and muttering away as fast as she could go, and all the other juniors standing looking at her, trying to keep count. Mere Jeanne wouldn't let anyone interrupt her. She says ejaculations are the best sort of prayers, you know."
"I don't at all agree," remarked Dorothy Brady loudly. "The Holy Souls for me. I can get simply anything I want by one De Profundis. They'll do anything for me—anything."
She spoke as though alluding to particularly highly trained performing animals, thought Zella.
"Oh, give me the rosary," said Mary McNeill, complacently whisking hers into her neighbour's face.
She habitually carried a rosary about with her, and contrived to tell an inconceivable number of beads while going up and down stairs, or in and out of doors, in file.
A babel immediately broke out, as the girls in various degrees of shrillness and enthusiasm vehemently proclaimed their favourite devotions.
The familiarity with which sacred names were screamed aloud scandalized Zella profoundly. .
She looked at Mother Veronica, wondering if she would not rebuke the irreverence of which these noisy partisans appeared to be guilty. But Mother Veronica smiled on serenely, until the tumult had somewhat subsided and she was able to make her own voice heard.
"Well, all devotions are good in their way, children, of course; but I must say that nothing ever seems to me quite equal to the dear Holy Ghost."
It appeared to Zella that the last word in profanity had been uttered by the smiling nun.
These shocks, however, were not destined to be the only ones sustained by Zella in connection with the mu'ch-talked-of Feast of Reverend Mother.
She quickly became accustomed to the sheet of foolscap inscribed "Spiritual Bouquet," hanging in the hall, and to which her companions rushed so frequently to place a fabulous number of pencil strokes. She even decided that it would be rather touching for the little Protestant to ask wistfully whether she also might not contribute her mite to the offering.
Instinctively selecting the guileless Mere Jeanne as victim for this histrionic experiment, Zella made her simple appeal one afternoon.
Mere Jeanne immediately kissed her warmly on both cheeks.
"Bien sûre, mon pauvre chéri! of course you must join in with the others, as far as you can. I will make you a list at once, and we shall see what you can do."
She nodded triumphantly as she fumbled in her ample pocket for pencil and paper.
"Tiens! I thought I had a pencil, but no—it is not there."
She drew out of the pocket a small rusty pocket-knife, two fat foreign envelopes with. frayed and torn edges, a small black rosary, a stout little book where innumerable cards and pictures were imperfectly confined by a worn elastic band, and the large checked square of duster that served her as pocket-handkerchief.
"No, it does not seem to be here."
She dived again, and Zella, fascinated, saw emerge yet another little book, this time protected by a neat garb of black alpaca, Mere Jeanne's well-worn old spectacle case, and a tiny stump of pencil concealed among a handful of old postage-stamps torn off their envelopes.
"What a lot your pocket holds!" she observed with polite astonishment.
"You must not be scandalized to see a religious, vowed to holy poverty, owning so much," said the old nun anxiously. "The stamps are collected for a Chinese mission, which I believe has been specially recommended