"Madame Agathe is pleased with me to-day," said Eileen. "To-morrow she will be displeased. But how can I help the colour of my soul any more than the colour of my hair?"
"Hush, my child; if you talk like that you will lose your faith. Nobody is pleased or vexed with anybody for the colour of their hair."
"Yes, where I come from a peasant girl suffers a little for having red hair. Also a man with a hump, he cannot marry unless he owns many pigs."
"Eileen! Who has put such dreadful thoughts into your head?"
"That is what I ask myself, ma mère. Many things are done to me and I sit in the centre looking on, like the weathercock on our castle at home, who sees himself turning this way and that way and can only creak."
"A weathercock is dead—you are alive."
"Not at night, ma mère. At home in my bedroom I used to put out my candle every night by clapping the extinguisher upon it. Who is it puts the extinguisher upon me?"
The good sister almost wished it could be she.
But she replied gently, "It is God who gives us sleep—we can't be always awake."
"Then I am not responsible for my dreams anyhow?"