It was still so early that the darkness of the room was just broken by
pale shafts of light from the windows, but I could see that the children
of my own age were only seven or eight altogether, while the majority of
the girls were several years older, and Mildred explained this by
telling me that the children of the Infant Jesus, like myself, were so
few that they had been put into the dormitory of the children of the
Sacred Heart.
In a quarter of an hour everybody was washed and dressed, and then, at a
word from Sister Angela, the girls went leaping and laughing downstairs
to the Meeting Room, which was a large hail, with a platform at the
farther end of it and another picture of the Sacred Heart, pierced with
sharp thorns, on the wall.
The Reverend Mother was there with the other nuns of the Convent, all
pale-faced and slow eyed women wearing rosaries, and she said a long
prayer, to which the scholars (there were seventy or eighty altogether)
made responses, and then there was silence for five minutes, which were
supposed to be devoted to meditation, although I could not help seeing
that some of the big girls were whispering to each other while their
heads were down.
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