We moved our quarters to a room in the front of the house, so as to look
out over the city, and down into the piazza which was full of traffic,
and after a while we had many cheerful hours together.
During the days before Christmas we spent our mornings in visiting the
churches and basilicas where there were little illuminated models of the
Nativity, with the Virgin and the Infant Jesus in the stable among the
straw. The afternoons we spent at home in the garden, where the
Chaplain, in his black soutane and biretta, was always sitting under the
old tree, reading his breviary.
His name was Father Giovanni and he was a tall young man with a long,
thin, pale face, and when Sister Angela first took me up to him she
said:
"This is our Margaret Mary."
Then his sad face broke into warm sunshine, and he stroked my head, and
sent me away to skip with my skipping-rope, while he and Sister Angela
sat together under the tree, and afterwards walked to and fro in the
avenue between the stone pines and the wall, until they came to his cell
in the corner, where she craned her neck at the open door as if she
would have liked to go in and make things more tidy and comfortable.
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