“About my ‘’am sandwich’? Wasn’t I good not even to smile?”
“You were indeed, and so were the rest of us, I think, though Lil gave me one look that almost upset me. She kept as sober as an owl, of course. I didn’t want to make fun of any one, but I never heard the h’s dropped, outside of a book or a movie.”
“Did you ever hear it in either?”
“Well, you know what I mean!”
“Gently, girls, the driver might hear you,” warned Miss Patty, who made the fourth passenger in this vehicle.
The first place at which the driver stopped was in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. The girls ran up the broad stone steps which led to the entrance. Silently they entered, viewed the brilliant interior, the altars and shrines with their candles, walked quietly down the aisle to the right past a kneeling worshipper who was telling her beads before a shrine, and into a part of the building to the rear of the altar.
“I can translate that,” whispered Marjorie to Cathalina as they looked at the inscriptions upon the wall. “‘Silence in the holy place’.” (Silence dans le lieu saint.)
“Notice the Latin inscriptions, too,—‘Oculos ad nos converte’—”
Hilary lingered a little to drop a coin into a box and came out with her eyes full of tears. “I’ve been brought up in another kind of service,” she explained to June, “but this touches me some way.”
“It’s the Lord’s house,” replied June solemnly.