XXVIII
IT was the second week in May, but as warm as summer and the flowers were all blooming in the parks. The artists were leaving Boston early that year. There seemed only a handful of them left in town. I had scarcely any engagements. Mr. Sands had left, and so had four other artists for whom I had been posing. Mr. Rintoul, too, had gone away. I could no longer go to Mr. Parker, the man who had beaten me.
I sat in my little hall room, reading a letter from home.
“Dear Marion: (wrote Ada.)
We are all very glad to hear you are doing so well in Boston” (I had told them so) “and we hope you will come home this summer.
Papa is not at all well and mama awfully worried. There is not much money coming in. I am doing all I can to help, and I gave up a good position offered me by the C. P. R. to travel over their Western lines and write travel pamphlets, because I will not leave mama just now.
Charles would do more, but his wife won’t let him. I think you ought to help. Ellen has been sending money regularly, but now Wallace is ill. Even Nora sends something each week.
I must say, Marion, that you always were the one to think only of yourself, and you always managed to have a good time. Now as you are earning money in the States, and there are so many younger ones at home, you certainly ought to send home some money. It is wicked of you not to.
You will be sorry to hear that Daisy (the sister next to Nellie) went into the convent to be a nun last week. She simply was bent upon it and nothing we could say or do would stop her. You know she became a convert to the Catholic faith soon after Nellie married de Rochefort. She is with the Order of the Little Sisters of Jesus, and her name is now Sister Marie Anastasia. We all feel very badly about it, as she is so young to shut herself up for life.
Last Sunday I went for a walk as far as the Convent of Les Petites Sœurs de Jesus, and I looked over the garden fence, but I could see no sign of our Daisy. So I called: ‘Daisy! Daisy!’ and oh, Marion, I felt awful to think of her behind those stone walls, just like a prisoner, and I even imagined I saw her face looking out of one of the windows of the solemn, ghostly-looking convent building. It is a very hard Order. We did everything to dissuade her, but one night she took the pilgrimage to Ste. Anne de Beaupré on a sort of prayer ship, and she never got off her knees all night long. Do you remember what beautiful hair Daisy had—the only one in our family with golden hair—well, it is all shaved off, mama says, though that was unnecessary till her final vows. So we’ve lost Daisy. It’s just as if she were dead.