Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/46

 A slow pink flush stole up to the nun's forehead. She glanced uneasily at her secretary and down at the small autocrat whose hands held her a prisoner. He removed them and lifted his arms to her with a shade of surprise in his blue eyes. Never before had any one held out against them. The baby's little world for a moment reeled under his feet. Then the dignified woman above him bent and lifted him gently.

He tucked his head under her chin, and his dimpled hand stole up and rested against her cheek. She laid her head against his for an instant, and an inarticulate sound passed her lips—the sound every baby knows and every true woman makes when she feels a little body nestling against her heart. The two left the room together, and the secretary followed them down the long dim corridor to the refectory, her eyes twinkling behind her glasses.

In exactly one week Frederick Addison Malcolm was the head of the institution. He decided no questions and he signed no papers, but he gave orders freely to high and low alike, and there was in the land the sound of footsteps hastening to do his bidding. The nuns were not at all sure that this was right. They had many theories on the training of children, and were anxious to demonstrate them on the