Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/261

 selected plump victims because their rotund and placid appearance irritated her. She was herself excessively thin and abnormally restless.

These incidents, all of which occurred within one brief but exciting half-hour, brought home to the nuns the fact that little Mercedes Centi, the new pupil, might be an element of discord in their peaceful retreat. They discussed her with forebodings during the interval between high mass and the noon meal. It seemed rather soon to adopt stringent measures of punishment; she had not been with them twenty-four hours. They decided to try moral suasion; and so for an hour and a half that afternoon two of the Sisters pointed out to the Imp the error of her ways while she watched, with the strained interest of one lost to all else, the gyrations of a large "blue-bottle" that buzzed about the window-panes. It is to be feared that she lost some of the edifying discourse directed to her, but the nuns afterwards felt that some of it must have found a place in her consciousness; for later in the day Mercedes called the other pupils around her while she unpacked her trunks and generously gave them most of her earthly possessions. These gifts were afterwards recalled by the nuns, and it was intimated to Mercedes that she might