Evelyn bade Sister Mary John good-bye, and went forward to meet her instructress.
The morning seemed full of adventure. There were Miss Dingle, her pious pictures, and the devil behind the gooseberry bushes. There was the picturesque figure of Sister Mary John, digging, making ready for the winter cabbages. There was the jackdaw, his story and his humours, and there was her discovery of the genius of St. Teresa. All these things had happened that morning, and Evelyn walked a little elated, her heart full of spiritual enthusiasm. The project was already astir in her for the acquisition of an edition in the original Spanish, and she looked forward to a study of that language as a pleasant and suitable occupation when she returned to London. She questioned Mother Mary Hilda regarding the merits of the English translation; the French, she said, she could read no longer. She described the worthy father's prose as asthmatic; she laughed at his long, wheezy sentences, but Sister Mary Hilda seemed inclined to set store on the Jesuit's pious intentions. The spirit was more essential than the form, and it was with this argument on their lips they sat down to the Latin lesson. The nun had opened the book, and Evelyn was about to read the first sentence, when, raising her eyes and voice, she said—
"Oh! Mother Mary Hilda, you've forgotten ... this is my last lesson, I am going away to-morrow."
"Even so it need not be the last lesson; you will come and see us during the winter, if you are in London. I don't remember that you said that you are going abroad to sing."
"Mother Mary Hilda, I'm thinking of leaving the stage."
The nun turned the leaves of the breviary, and it seemed to Evelyn that she dreaded the intrusion on her thoughts of a side of life the very existence of which she had almost succeeded in forgetting; and, feeling a little humbled, Evelyn applied herself to the lesson. And it was just as Mary Hilda's hand closed the books that the door opened and the Reverend Mother entered, bringing, it seemed, a new idea and a new conception of life into the room. Mother Mary Hilda gathered up her books, and having answered the Reverend Mother's questions in her own blithe voice, each word illuminated by the happy smile which Evelyn thought so beautiful, withdrew like an apparition.
The Reverend Mother took the place that Mother Mary Hilda had left, and by her very manner of sitting down, showed that she had come on some special intention.
"Miss Innes, I have come to ask you not to leave to-morrow. If you are not already tired of our life, it would give us great pleasure if you would stay with us till Monday."
"It is very good of you to ask me to stay, I have been very happy; indeed, I dread returning; it is difficult to return to the life of the world after having seen what your life is here."
"We should only be too happy if you will prolong your stay. You are free to remain as long as you please."