Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/282

 watched her with more annoyance than surprise as she walked away. "Has that child a heart?" she mused. "Never. There isn't a symptom of one—the little wretch! What can dear Saint Ernesta see in her?" She pondered gloomily over the Imp's unregenerate attitude as she went to consult Sister Cecilia concerning her own share in the musical programme of the entertainment to be given the next week.

During the days that followed the Imp went her way in icy aloofness from her associates. She did nothing out of the common, for which grace her teacher devoutly gave thanks in her nightly orisons, but neither did she show signs of the regeneration they had hoped to see. Several times she met Saint Ernesta in the halls and passageways, and once the old nun stopped. But her remarks were on the subject of an injured bird the Imp was carefully treating in the conservatory, and her friendly inquiries after the health of the pet were very civilly answered by Mercedes. Then the two went their separate ways, and the Imp sought diversion from the nervous strain of virtue by carefully cutting off the yellow curls of the girl in front of her in the French class. The teacher was near-sighted, the victim engrossed in her book, and the other pupils silent from sheer ecstasy.