aily
task is to hoe and tend, and prune and train, and water the young green
things growing in what to them is the Garden of God, and to other good and
even holy people, the vineyard of the devil. Possibly both are right?

I have heard the habit of the Order called ugly. But upon the stately
person of the Mother Superior the garb was regal. The sweeping black folds
were as imposing as imperial purple, and the starched guimpe framed a
beauty that was grave, stern, almost severe until she smiled, and then you
caught your breath, because you had seen what great poets write of, and
great painters try to render, and only great musicians by their
impalpable, mysterious tone-art can come nearest to conveying--the earthly
beauty that has been purged of all grosser particles of dross in the white
fires of the Divine Love. She was not altogether perfect, or one could not
have loved her so. Her scorn of any baseness was bitterly scathing; the
point of her sarcasm was keen as any thrusting blade of tempered steel;
her will was to be obeyed, and was obeyed as sovereign law, else woe
betide the disobedient. Also, though kind and gracious to all, tenderly
solicitous for, and incessantly watchful of, the welfare of the least of
her charges, she never feigned where she could not feel regard or love.
Her rare kiss was coveted in the little world of the Convent school as the
jewel of an Imperial Order was coveted in the bigger world outside it, and
the most rebellious of the pupils held her in respect mingled with fear.
The head-mistresses of the classes had their followers and admirers. It
was for the Mother Superior to command enthusiasm, and to sway ambition,
and to govern the hearts and minds of children with the personal charm and
the intellectual powers that could have ruled a nation from a throne.

Well, she has gone to God. It is good for many souls that she lived upon
earth a little. There was nothing sentimental, visionary, or hysterical in
her character. Nor, in giving her great heart with her pure soul to her
Saviour, did she ever quite learn to despise the sweetness of earthly
love. Not all a Saint. Yet the children of those women who most were
swayed by her influence in youth are taught to hold her Saint as well as
Martyr. And there is One Who knows.

It was not until recess after the midday dinner that Greta Du Taine could
exhibit her love-letter. She was a Transvaal Dutch girl with old French
blood in her, a vivacio