"I should think so! Housemaid's duty! I understand now what you meant a minute back! ... By George! ... 'Miserable hours!' ..."
Her deep eyes rested on him calmly:
"And after I am clothed—after I have received the habit—I shall most likely go on having them! I daresay I shall have them after I have taken the Veil."
He kicked the fender again, his hands shoved deep into his empty pockets, and felt the shilling, sole coin remaining to him, burn against his aching ribs. He would have given ten years of life to have been able to tell her that a home with him was ready and waiting,—in case she shrank from the final plunge. He made a great effort and groaned out:
"But that won't be for two years to come. And things may happen—who knows!"
"Oh! I pray," she said with a sudden flush, "that I need not wait two years!"
Her eagerness lifted a load that had been crushing him. In sheer relief he began to stammer:
"What a blessed idiot I am! I didn't understand ... I thought you ... I believed you.... Of course you don't do the dirty work now. That was only for a time, at the beginning. Well, I'm glad! I'd hate to think of my sister tackling servants' duties, anyway! All right! Well, what are you on to now, eh? Back at dusting the Altar and doing the flowers?"
"No. That is for others.—There are many others, and each of them must have a turn at the pleasant things. When you have lived in the community only a short time, you begin to understand that.... And when you have lived in it only a little longer you learn that between the pleasant duties and the unpleasant duties there is no difference, whatever. Nothing being done that is not done for God. When I was scrubbing the desks in the Little Class to-day,—there are seventy children, and the tiny ones come in with muddy boots from the garden in wet weather, and splash the ink over everything,—I was dusting the Altar.... When I was washing the slates I was washing the Feet of Christ. It is no matter what we do as long as it is nothing to be ashamed of—and is done with a right intention! ... The lowest service counts as the highest in the sight of Almighty God. It is one of the great mysteries of Faith that this should be so. But it is so! ... There's the first bell for Benediction!"
It was too late now. But even as she rose with that wonderful look in the calm face framed in by the triple row of little starched frills, and took his hand and led him to the door, P. C. Breagh realized that he ought from the first to have told the truth to her.