"Oh! no one will touch me--a poor man," said Mon, with his pleasant smile. "Have you the key with you?"
Sor Teresa looked on the bunch hanging at her girdle.
"No," she admitted rather reluctantly, "I will send for it."
And she called by gesture one of the nuns who seemed to be looking the other way and yet perceived the movement of Sor Teresa's hand.
While the key was being brought, Mon stood looking with his gentle smile over the lower wall of the garden, where the pathway cuts across the bare fields down towards the river.
"Would it not be wiser to carry that key with you always in case it should be wanted, as in the present instance?" he said, smoothly.
"I shall do so in future," replied Sor Teresa, humbly; for the first duty of a nun is obedience, and there is no nunnery that is not under the immediate and unquestioned control of some man, be he a priest or in some privileged cases, the Pontiff himself.
At last a second bunch of keys was placed in Sor Teresa's hands, and she examined them carefully.
"I am not quite sure," she said, "which is the right one. It is so seldom used."
And she fingered them, one by one.