Anxiously the girls waited. To their great relief, they heard a key turn in the lock. Then, an inch at a time, the door was pushed open.
Old Julia, her eyes wild, and hair streaming down her face, stared blankly in at them.
“Thanks, Julia!” said Penny. She tried to touch the woman’s hand in a gesture of friendship, only to have her shrink back.
“Why, we won’t hurt you,” Penny attempted to sooth her.
“Go!” the woman mumbled, her cracked lips quivering. “Go!”
Seeing us here always seems to upset her, Penny thought. Aloud she remarked: “Yes, we’re leaving now. If Father Benedict wonders what became of us, I’m afraid he’ll just have to guess.”
The girls started toward the cloister with Old Julia following a step behind.
“Hurry! Hurry!” she muttered. “No time!”
“Oh, we have plenty of time, if that’s what you mean,” replied Penny, smiling at her in a friendly way. Suddenly she halted as the thought occurred to her that she might obtain useful information from the woman if only she phrased her questions skillfully.
“Julia, you must know everyone who lives here in the dormitory rooms,” she began. “Do you often see a girl about my age?”