CHAPTER II.
A GREEN TWIG.
Os the west side of the convent, under the lofty, wide-spreading, thickly-leaved chestnut-trees, beeches, and lindens, and far in among the firs with their fresh shoots, stationary tables and benches were arranged. Girls in blue dresses were sitting here, reading, writing, or busy with their hand-work. Sometimes there was a low humming, but not louder than the humming of the bees in the blossoming chestnut-trees; sometimes a moving this way and that, a change in one's position, but not more than the fluttering of a bird in the trees overhead.
Manna sat at the table beneath a large fir-tree, and at a little distance from her, on a low seat under a lofty beech on whose trunk many names were carved, and on which was suspended a framed picture of the Madonna, sat a little child; she looked up frequently at Manna, who nodded to her, indicating that she must study her book more diligently, and be as busy as the rest. The child was nicknamed Heimchen, because she had suffered so much from homesickness, and Heimchen had become the pet of all the girls. Manna had cured the child, to all appearance at least, for on the day after the representation of the sacred play, she had received permission from a lay-sister who presided over the gardening, to prepare for the child a separate little garden-plat; and now she seemed to be taking root in the foreign land, as did the plants which she had since watered and cared for, but she was inseparable from Manna.
Manna worked diligently; some pale blue paper was lying before her, and she was painting on it, with a fine brush, pictures of the stars in color of gold from small shells.
She prided herself especially on having the neatest writing-books, every leaf ruled very regularly with lines close together, and uniformly written upon, neither too coarse nor too fine. Manna had received, a few days since, the highest mark of honor ever conferred on a pupil, by being unanimously made the recipient of the blue ribbon, which the three classes of the children, namely, the children of Jesus, the angels of Mary, and the children of Mary, had adjudged to her. There had hardly been any election, so much a matter of course did it seem that nobody but Manna could be designated for the blue ribbon. This badge of distinction gave her a sort of right to be considered a superior.
While she was thus drawing, and frequently running her eye over the children left under her care, she had a book open by her side; it was Thomas à Kempis. While putting in the stars, which she did with that delicate and beautiful finish attainable, perhaps, only in the convent, she snatched a few sentences out of Thomas à Kempis, that her soul might be occupied with higher thoughts during this trifling occupation.
The stroke of oars sounded from the shore on that side: the girls looked up; a handsome young man was standing in the boat, who lifted his hat and waved it, as if saluting the island.
"Is he your brother? your cousin?" was whispered here and there.
No one knew the stranger.