Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/44

 This incident led to his acceptance as an inmate of the institution. Notwithstanding the pathos of his position, so young an orphan, and the fact that the mother who had just died had herself been brought up in the convent, the nuns had decided that they could not take him even for the few months during which his guardian wished him to remain with them. They had intended to convey this information to the trained nurse who had brought him, but the ease and assurance of his manner, his little black dress, and his air of having reached home after a weary journey, checked the words upon their lips. The Mother Superior hastily deposited her unusual burden on a hair-cloth "sofa" that stood in the corner, but she was observed to turn a fascinated gaze upon it even while she retired to the other end of the reception-room for a hurried consultation with her secretary.

The nurse glanced from the sleeping child to the two black-veiled heads so close together, and smiled to herself. She knew full well the fascinations of Frederick Addison Malcolm, aged two. Had he not turned the battery of them upon her since his mother's death, and was not her heart even now wrung at the prospect of parting from him? Of course the nuns would keep him. Who could help it? She