The suddenness with which my query was launched (I always hated roundabout approaches) startled even this seasoned nun. “If you’ve taken a thing,” she echoed. “Do you mean stolen?”
“Yes,” I answered stolidly.
She looked astonished for a moment, and then the shadow of a smile passed over her face. “Is it something you have eaten?” she asked, “and that is why you cannot give it back?”
I laughed a little miserable laugh. It was natural that this solution of the problem should present itself to Madame Rayburn’s mind, albeit we were not in the fruit season. But then, it had once happened that a collation had been set for the Archbishop and some accompanying priests in the conference room, and that Elizabeth, Lilly, and I, spying through a half-open door the tempting array of sandwiches and cake, had descended like Harpies upon the feast. This discreditable incident lingered, it was plain, in Madame Rayburn’s memory, and prompted her question.
“No, it wasn’t anything to eat,” I said; and then, recognizing the clemency of her mood (she was not always clement), I revealed the sacrilegious nature of my spoliation. “And I’ve lost them, and can’t put them back,” I wound up sorrowfully.
Madame Rayburn looked grave. Whether it was because she was shocked, or because she was amused and wanted to conceal her amusement, I cannot say. “Did you do this by yourself?” she said; and then, seeing my face, added hastily: “No, I won’t ask you that question. It isn’t fair, and besides, I know you won’t answer. But if there are any more straws in anybody’s possession, I want you to bring them to me to-night. That’s all. Now go to confession. Say you’ve told, and that it’s all right.”
I was dismissed. With a light heart I sped to the chapel. To see one’s way clear through the intricacies of life; to be sure of one’s next step, and of a few steps to follow,—at eleven, or at threescore and ten, this is beatitude.
It was Saturday morning when we emerged from retreat, a clear, warm Saturday in June. Mass was over, and we filed down in measureless content to the refectory. Because of our four days’ silence, we were permitted to speak our blessed mother tongue at breakfast time. Therefore, instead of the dejected murmur which was the liveliest expression of our Gallic eloquence, there rose upon the startled air a clamorous uproar, a high, shrill, joyous torrent of sound. A hundred girls were talking fast and furiously to make up for lost time. We had hot rolls for breakfast, too, a luxury reserved for such special occasions; and we were all going to the woods in the afternoon, both First and Second Cours,—going for two long, lovely hours, which would give us time to reach the farthest limits of our territory. Elizabeth came and squeezed herself on the bench beside me, to propose a private search for the white violets that grew in the marshy ground beyond the lake, and that bloomed long after the wood violets had gone. Tony shouted across two intervening benches that she didn’t see why we could not secure the boat, and have a row,—as if the Second Cours girls were at all likely to get possession of the boat when the First Cours girls were around. “We can, if we try,” persisted Tony, in whom four days of peaceful meditation had bred the liveliest inclination for a brawl. As for me, I ate my roll, and looked out of the window at the charming vista stretching down to the woods; and my spirits mounted higher and higher with the rising tide of joy, with the glad return to the life of every day. Heaven, an assured hereafter, had receded comfortably into the dim future. Hell was banished from our apprehensions. But, oh, how beautiful was the world!