rtunity of
meeting with Alma--the visit to the lay-sisters to be measured for my
new black clothes, the three o'clock "rosary," when the nuns walked with
their classes in the sunshine and, above all, the voluntary visit to the
Blessed Sacrament in the Church of the Convent, which seemed to me
large and gorgeous, though divided across the middle by an open bronze
screen, called a Cancello--the inner half, as Mildred whispered, being
for the inmates of the school, while the outer half was for the
congregation which came on Sunday to Benediction.

But at four o'clock we had dinner, when Alma read again--this time in
Italian--from the writings of Saint Francis of Sales--and then, to my
infinite delight, came a long recreation, when all the girls scampered
out into the Convent garden, which was still bright with afternoon
sunshine and as merry with laughter and shouts as the seashore on a
windy summer morning.

The garden was a large bare enclosure, bounded on two sides by the
convent buildings and on the other two by a yellow wall and an avenue
made by a line of stone pines with heads like open umbrellas, but it had
no other foliage except an old tree which reminded me of Tommy the Mate,
having gnarled and sprawling limbs, and standing like a weather-beaten
old sailor, four-square in the middle.

A number of the girls were singing and dancing around this tree, and I
felt so happy just then that I should have loved to join them, but I was
consumed by a desire to come to close quarters with the object of my
devotion, so I looked eagerly about me and asked Mildred if Alma was
likely to be there.

"Sure to be," said Mildred, and hardly were the words out of her mouth
when Alma herself came straight down in our direction, surrounded by a
group of admiring girls, who were hanging on to her and laughing at
everything she said.

My heart began to thump, and without knowing what I was doing I stopped
dead short, while Mildred went on a pace or two ahead of me.

Then I noticed that Alma had stopped too, and that her great searching
eyes were looking down at me. In my nervousness, I tried to smile, but
Alma continued to stare, and at length, in the tone of one who had
accidentally turned up something with her toe that was little and
ridiculous, she said:

"Goodness, girls, what's this?"

Then she burst into a fit of laughter, in which the other girls joined,
and looking me up and down they all laughed together.

I knew wha