"A little altar, with a stone step on which you kneel. And a crucifix at the top, a book of prayer and invocation. Many of the sisters pray an hour at midnight. All pray an hour in the morning, then breakfast and the chapel for another hour, with prayers and singing. After that the classes. The little girls are taught the catechism and manners, if they are to go out in the world, sewing and embroidery. At noon prayers again and a little lunch, then work out of doors for an hour, and running about for exercise, catechising again, singing, supper and a chapel hour, and then to bed. But the nuns spend the evening in prayer, so do the devout."
"Madame, I shall never go in a convent, if the Fathers build one for girls. I like the big out-of-doors. And if God made the world He made it for some purpose, that people should go out and enjoy it. I like the wilderness, the great blue sky, the sun and the stars at night, the trees and the river, and the birds and the deer and the beautiful wild geese, as they sail in great flocks. If I was shut up in a cell I should beat my head against the stones until it was a jelly, and then I should be dead."
Madame de Champlain looked at the child in amaze. In her decorous life she had known nothing like it.
"And I wish there were no women. I do not like women any more. Men are better because they live out of doors and do not pray so much. Except the priests. And they are dirty."
Then she turned away and went out on the gallery, with a curiously swelling heart. Oh, why was not Marie Gaudrion different? What made people so unlike. If there was some one——
"Ha, little maid, where are you running to so fast?" exclaimed a laughing voice. "Have you seen my sister yet?"
Eustache Boullé caught her arm, but she shook him off, and stood up squarely, facing him. What vigor and resolution there was in her small bewitching face.
"Hi, hi! thou art a plucky little fille, ready for a quarrel by the looks of thy flashing eyes. What have I done to thee, that thou shouldst shake me off as a viper?"
"Nothing! I am not to be handled roughly. I am going my way, and I think it will not interfere with thine."
A pleasant smile crossed his face which made him really attractive, and half disarmed her fierceness.