"On Corpus Christi"--or it may have been some other saint's day, I
cannot keep these things in my head--"our school played Roehampton at
Hockey. And, seeing that our side was losing, being three goals to
one against us at halftime, we retired into the chapel and prayed for
victory. We won by five goals to three." And I remember that she seemed
to describe afterwards a sort of saturnalia. Apparently, when the
victorious fifteen or eleven came into the refectory for supper, the
whole school jumped upon the tables and cheered and broke the chairs on
the floor and smashed the crockery--for a given time, until the
Reverend Mother rang a hand-bell. That is of course the Catholic
tradition--saturnalia that can end in a moment, like the crack of a
whip. I don't, of course, like the tradition, but I am bound to say that
it gave Nancy--or at any rate Nancy had--a sense of rectitude that I
have never seen surpassed. It was a thing like a knife that looked
out of her eyes and that spoke with her voice, just now and then. It
positively frightened me. I suppose that I was almost afraid to be in a
world where there could be so fine a standard. I remember when she was
about fifteen or sixteen on going back to the convent I once gave her
a couple of English sovereigns as a tip. She thanked me in a peculiarly
heartfelt way, saying that it would come in extremely handy. I asked her
why and she explained. There was a rule at the school that the pupils
were not to speak when they walked through the garden from the chapel
to the refectory. And, since this rule appeared to be idiotic and
arbitrary, she broke it on purpose day after day. In the evening the
children were all asked if they had committed any faults during the day,
and every evening Nancy confessed that she had broken this particular
rule. It cost her sixpence a time, that being the fine attached to the
offence. Just for the information I asked her why she always confessed,
and she answered in these exact words:

"Oh, well, the girls of the Holy Child have always been noted for their
truthfulness. It's a beastly bore, but I've got to do it."

I dare say that the miserable nature of her childhood, coming before the
mixture of saturnalia and discipline that was her convent life, added
something to her queernesses. Her father was a violent madman of
a fellow, a major of one of what I believe are called the Highland
regiments. He didn't drink, but he had an ungovernable temper, and