“If you’ll step this way, Sister——”
Mother of Mercy! What a start she’d got! It was the man himself, and smiling, too, standing holding the door open. Awfully young-looking, with dark eyes that might have been Irish, and a queer white coat on him.
And the gentleness of him, when he’d got the orphan into that chair of his! She’d only to stir, and him stopping the machine, and saying, with that smile, that he was afraid it was hurting her.
As if one didn’t go to the dentist to be hurt, and the pain to be offered up for all Reverend Mother’s intentions!
Look at the hands of him!
She watched them, moving softly and skilfully. Presently he talked to her, at first friendly, joking, little questions, then at more length, telling about himself. He was a stranger in the town, too.
“It’ll be the grand thing for you, if Reverend Mother sends the orphans regularly. I’ll put in a good word for you,” she ventured, and he looked at her, screwing-up his eyes, and laughing.
She’d not spoken to any man, not counting the good holy priests which was a different thing altogether, for many years.
But if they were all like this, where would be the harm in them at all? She’d make the orphans start a novena for his conversion to the Faith, that very night.
“Now the next child, please.”