Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/102

 to devote herself to the composition of songs. The concert stage and half the drawing-rooms of America were familiar with many of them. They were published anonymously, but the identity of the composer was an open secret, and the convent was the richer for her work. As time passed, she was exempted from many of the routine duties, that she might give herself effectively to the music she loved, and put on paper the masses and aves that welled up in her heart. The pupils adored her. They were not sure she knew of their existence, for her usual mood was one of serene abstraction, but they loved her none the less loyally for her seeming aloofness from them.

"Half the time," said May Iverson on one occasion, "you'd think she didn't know we were alive! But be in trouble and there isn't one of the Sisters more sympathetic. She is something you have to live up to."

Sister Cecilia was the especial friend of the small children in the convent. Their companionship did not disturb her musical reveries, and they followed her about in the garden and through the corridors, drawn to her by some subtle sympathy which neither she nor they could analyze, yet which they felt to the core of their sensitive little hearts.

"She spoils them," said Sister Philomene,