ONE HUNDRED AND TWELFTH CHAPTER
She arrived the following afternoon—my dear Reverend Mother with the pale spiritual face and saint-like eyes.
Except that her habit was now blue and white instead of black, she seemed hardly changed in any respect since our days at the Sacred Heart.
Finding that I was in bed, she put up at the "Plough" and came every day to nurse me.
I was naturally agitated at seeing her again after so many years and such various experiences, being uncertain how much she knew of them.
Remembering Martin's warning, I was also fairly certain that she had been sent for, but my uneasiness on both heads soon wore off.
Her noiseless step, her soft voice, and her sweet smile soothed and comforted me. I began to feel afresh the influence she had exercised over me when I was a child, and to wonder why, during my dark time in London, I had never thought of writing to her.
During the first days of her visit she said nothing about painful things—never mentioning my marriage, or what had happened since she saw me last.
Her talk was generally about our old school and my old schoolfellows, many of whom came to the convent for her "retreats," which were under the spiritual direction of one of the Pope's domestic prelates.
Sometimes she would laugh about our Mother of the Novices who had "become old and naggledy"; sometimes about the little fat Maestro of the Pope's choir who had cried when I first sang the hymn to the Virgin, ("Go on, little angel,"); and sometimes about the two old lay sisters (now quite toothless) who still said I might have been a "wonderful washerwoman" if I had "put my mind to it."