The two women hustled the trembling Fouchette away from the Presence.
Fouchette knew the disgrace of the douche. She had seen grown young women stripped stark naked before five hundred girls and have a bucket of ice-cold water thrown over them. One of them had been ill and was unable to do her work. She had died from the effects.
Fouchette understood the terrible significance of the paddle. A girl was stripped and strung up by the wrists to a door and was beaten with a heavy leather strap soaked in brine until the blood ran down her thighs.
Fouchette comprehended the character of the five days on bread and water, wherein the victim was forced to remain in her own filth for five days with nothing to eat but a half-loaf of stale bread and a small pitcher of water per twenty-four hours.
Yet, dreadful as was this immediate prospect, and as cruel as was the injustice meted out to her, Fouchette thought only of Sister Agnes. She would have gone to punishment like a Stoic of old could somebody have assured her that what she had just heard was false and that Sister Agnes was yet in the institution. Everything else and all together seemed dwarfed by the side of this one great overwhelming calamity.
"How could you have so angered Madame?" said one of her conductors,—both of whom were aware that she was to be unjustly punished.
"Be good, now, Fouchette," whispered the other; "besides, it is nothing,—a little water,—bah!"
They were leading her along a dark corridor, the same through which she had been taken five years before. It rushed over her now,—dear Sister Agnes!
"I only wanted to know about Sister Agnes," protested Fouchette.
Her conductors stopped short.