Then there was that other world, touching the world of the girls but infinitely removed from it––the world of the sisters.
That mysterious cloister from which the sisters came and gave their hours of teaching or duty and to which they retreated back again was a world all by itself.
What was there in there behind those doors that never banged? What was there in there that made the sisters all so very much alike? They must once have been as different as every girl is different from every other girl.
How was it that they could carry with them all day long that air of never being tired or fretted or worried? What wonderful presence was there behind the doors of that cloistered house that seemed to come out with them and stay with them all the time? What was the light that shone in their faces?
Was it just because they were always contented and happy? What did they have to be happy about?
Ruth had tried to question the other girls about this. They were Catholics. They ought to know. But Bessie Donnelly had brushed her question aside with a stare:
“Sisters always look like that.”
So Ruth did not ask any more. But her mind kept prying at that world of the sisters behind 38 those walls. What did they do in there? Did they laugh and talk and scold each other, like people? Or did they just pray all the time? Or did they see wonderful, starry visions of God and Heaven that they were always talking about? They seemed so familiar with God. They knew just when He was pleased and especially when He was displeased.
She had come down out of her hills where everything was so open, where there were no mysteries, where everything from the bark on the trees to the snow clouds on Marcy, fifty miles away, was as clear as a printed book. Everything up there told its plain lesson. She could read the storm signs and the squirrel tracks. Nothing had been hidden. Nothing in nature or life up there had ever shut itself away from her.