“That’s what it would do to me if I were its kind of person. It would make you feel peaceful. Isn’t it funny? You don’t really belong to it religiously and yet you fit in here much better than Madeline. You’re like the place. Matthew would explain that all in high sounding terms. I can’t explain it, but I do feel it.”
Cecily appreciated the half thought-out compliment. “The convent means a great deal to girls who were brought up here.”
“Did you have to study hard?”
“Not too hard. Have you seen where we studied?”
She took Fliss through the study halls, through the garden, down to the refectory and the winter playroom.
“It’s so different,” was Fliss’s comment. “Of course I liked the old High, and I had a corking time there. And I suppose it was pretty dull here with no boys, but it did make—ladies of you all.”
“Perhaps it didn’t make us very wise.”
“No, I know a lot more than you do about ways to get what I want. I think I know more about handling men than you do. But then you seem to get them without handling.”
That struck Cecily as a bit coarse and Fliss knew it. So she acknowledged it.
“That sounds rather coarse, doesn’t it? But most things outside of this enclosure are a bit coarse, I think.”