Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/284

 much, for as long as we can remember she has been with us on these occasions. Yet her influence is with us as vividly as if she herself sat in that empty chair, smiling on us as she has smiled for years—as we pray she may smile on us for many years to come."

That was all. Sister Cecilia raised her baton and the convent orchestra burst into the jubilant strains of the Spring Song. A few of the smaller girls were ostentatiously wiping their wet eyes, but the Imp preserved an unruffled immobility. She held her programme very tightly, and her olive skin had taken on a lighter hue, but her black eyes looked down at the faces below her with merely polite interest in their glance.

May Iverson stole away from the hall as soon as she could escape unnoticed and went to Sister Ernesta's room. The nun sat by a window gazing past the snow-covered garden into the blue-gray winter sky that hung above it. She smiled at the young girl as she entered, and looked questioningly into her glowing face. To May there was deep pathos in the lonely vigil and the hope that brightened it.

"I came to tell you, dear Sister Ernesta," she said, sadly, "about that extraordinary child. She is quite unmoved and is having a very pleasant time—" She stopped abruptly.