not in many respects absolutely joyous. For
instance, the beds were prison beds, but they were clean and the
dormitories fairly well ventilated,--luxury to one who was accustomed
to sleep in a noisome cellar on filthy and envermined straw. The food
was coarse and frugal, but it was regular and almost prodigal to one
habituated to disputing her breakfast with vagrant dogs. The clothes
were coarse and cheap and often shabby, but to the child of rags they
were equivalent to royal gowns. The discipline was severe, but it was
unadulterated kindness by the side of the brutality of the Podvin.

The society of respectable young girls of her own age, and constant
contact with those who were older and of superior birth and breeding,
opened up a new world to Fouchette. That these companions were more
or less partakers of similar misfortunes engendered ready sympathies,
though the feeling of caste was as powerful among these orphans of the
State as in the Boulevard St. Germain. Tacitly acknowledging the lowly
origin of the rag-heap, Fouchette was content to fag, to go and come,
fetch and carry, and to patiently endure the multitude of petty
tyrannies put upon her. She accepted this position from the start as a
matter of course.

But it was chiefly in the daily intercourse with the cheerful,
ruddy-faced, and rather worldly as well as womanly Sister Agnes that
Fouchette found life worth living. It was Sister Agnes who patiently
instructed her in the mysteries of reading and writing and spelling
and the simple rudiments of language and figures. Sister Agnes
smoothed her young protegee's pathway through a sea of new
difficulties. Sister Agnes had secret struggles of her own, and had
worn away considerable stone before the image of the Virgin in the
course of her seclusion; though precisely what the nature of her
private troubles was must have been known to nobody else. Sister Agnes
was not a favorite with the Superieure, apparently, since every time
she was called before that dreaded female functionary she seemed much
agitated and held longer conferences with the image of the Virgin in
the little bare chapel. Whatever her mental and moral disturbances,
however, Sister Agnes never faltered in her attention to Fouchette.

For the most part these were surreptitious, though to the recipient
there did not appear to be any reason for this concealment. As one
year followed another Fouchette saw more clearly, and it caused her
to redouble h