rt of the paraphernalia of a sister of the House of Martha.

"Allow me," I said, and, taking off my straw hat, I gently fanned her.

Mother Anastasia laughed. "This is really too much; please stop it. But
you may lend me your hat. I did not know the morning would be so warm,
and I am afraid I walked too fast. But we are losing time. Will you tell
me precisely what it is you wish to know of me?"

"I can soon do that," I answered; "but I must first say that I believe
you will suffocate if you try to talk from under that cavernous bonnet.
Why don't you take it off, and get the good of this cool shade? You had
discarded all that sort of thing when I last talked with you, and you
were then just as much a Mother Superior as you are now."

She smiled. "The case was very different then. I was actually obliged,
by the will of another, to discard the garb of our sisterhood."

"I most earnestly wish," said I, "that you could be obliged to do
partially the same thing now. With that bonnet on, you do not seem at
all the same person with whom I talked on Tangent Island. You appear
like some one to whom I must open the whole subject anew."

"Oh, don't do that," she said, with a deprecating movement of her
hand,--"I really haven't the time to listen; and if my bonnet hinders
your speech, off it shall come. Now, then, I suppose you want to know
the reason of my change of position in regard to Sylvia and you." As she
said this she took off her bonnet; not with a jerk, as Sylvia had once
removed hers, but carefully, without disturbing the dark hair which was
disposed plainly about her head. I was greatly relieved; this was an
entirely different woman to talk to.

"Yes," I replied, "that is what I want to know."

"I will briefly give you my reasons," she said, still fanning herself
with my hat, while I stood before her, earnestly listening, "and you
will find them very good and conclusive reasons. When I spoke to you
before, the case was this: Sylvia Raynor had had a trouble, which made
her think she was the most miserable girl in the whole world, and she
threw herself into our sisterhood. Her mother did not object to this,
because of course Sylvia entered as a probationer, and she thought a few
months of the House of Martha life would do her good. That her daughter
would permanently join the sisterhood never occurred to her. As I was a
relative, it was a natural thing that the girl should enter a house of
which I was the head. I di