Exactly on the stroke of twelve noon, the chapel doors open and visitors are admitted. As soon as they are seated the nuns file in two by two, and recite the stations of the Cross in a low monotone. Often some nun with a very beautiful voice sings an anthem. When the service is over a diminutive sister remains behind as a guide to take visitors over the building; one who speaks French or English equally well.
It is all very clean, from the great kitchens with vats of pea soup boiling and the laundries filled with steam in the basement, to the very top of the building where there are play rooms for the tiny tots. Here some of the older children line up and sing for the visitors and are quite ready to receive coins or candies. There is one room where blind people are taught to read and to do bead work, it is interesting to watch them select the right shade of bead by simply feeling the end of the box which holds them.
In another room there are nimble fingers making wax flowers, weaving lace and doing embroidery.
The drug store was redolent with drugs and a young nun was busy filling prescriptions; she laughed very hard when Queenie exclaimed: "Why, I smell Gregory's mixture!" In a tiny room there was a dental chair, in which was seated a young orphan, and a nun was busy filling this child's teeth. Nobody was idle, even the very old men and women helped with the scrubbing of the floors and woodwork.
It was just one o'clock when they came out again at the Guy Street entrance, and Miss Anstruther said it was high time they had luncheon. So they went to La Corona Café on that same street, and there, in a delightful out of door garden, they sat at a small table with the lovely blue sky above them and flowers all about them, and a very attentive waiter. It is quite like a Parisian café. During their meal they chatted together about what they had seen, and asked eagerly about what was to follow.
"It is a puzzle to decide," said Miss Anstruther, "whether we had best go up on Mount Royal where from that elevation I could point out to you many historic spots of interest, including St. Helen's Island named after Champlain's wife, who was a French Helen somebody—and Victoria Bridge built when the late King Edward was a boy of eighteen and he came out here on a tour, and stopped to drive the last rivet in this bridge, and the location of Dollard's Lane, named from a brave young Frenchman who fought the Iroquois—or shall we go out to Lachine by trolley in time to take the boat over the rapids, that will bring us into the docks by supper time and out home a half hour later.
"I vote for whichever will have the most about Indians," said George, "we can see the Victoria Bridge when we travel any day." At this moment a party of French politicians entered the enclosure and Oisette's eyes dilated with amazement, "Mon père!" she exclaimed. Sure enough, it was Monsieur Tremblent, and he, too, was amazed to behold his little girl in a new white sailor hat. Miss Anstruther explained how Oisette happened to be with them, so he took a great interest in their plans, and after consulting with his party found he could put a motor car at Miss Anstruther's disposal; in this they could cover more ground in the city and be taken out to Lachine, then the party could see the rapids and the car could be brought back to its owner at five o'clock, when he would be returning from the political meeting.
Their plans were soon made, and their first stop was to be on Sherbrooke Street just west of Guy Street, where behind huge gray stone walls, is situated the grand seminary of the Sulpician Order. Entering these grounds, they could see the huge building which houses four hundred or more students, all preparing for the priesthood, but one reason of their visit was to see the two stone towers in the grounds which were built in very early times and remain standing in an excellent state of preservation. One of these old towers was used as a chapel for the Indian mission and the other as a school. A tablet on the chapel tower bears the inscription "Here rest the mortal remains of a Huron Indian baptized by the Reverend Père de Brebeuf. He was, by his piety and by his probity, the example of the Christians, and the admiration of the unbelievers; he died aged one hundred years the 21st of April, 1690."
Miss Anstruther reminded George that he had but recently read in Parkman's history about this same Rev. Père de Brebeuf, who was tortured to death by the Iroquois with every cruelty devisable.
The school held in the other tower had, at one time, a famous native teacher; she was called "the school mistress of the mountains," and died in 1695, when but twenty-eight years old. Above the door of the western wing of the great seminary is the legend in Latin "Hie evangel; bantur Indi," "Here the Indians were evangelized."