Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/74

 chair, and I knew she was going to talk! Of course I went right on playing—I knew enough for that. If we stopped, Sister Chrysostom always left. But I kept to the first two pages, which I knew pretty well, and played them over and over very softly. Sister Chrysostom saw through it, for her lips twitched; but she sat for a time without speaking, and I played on and waited.

At last she said, "May, do you ever go to the theatre?"

I thought I would drop off the piano-stool! In the first place, she had never called me "May" before; you know how formal they always are. In my graduation year it was "Miss Iverson" with all of them, no matter how many years they had known me, and I hadn't known her a year, for she had just come to the convent the fall before, from some other institution. And then, for her to speak of the theatre!

I kept as cool as I could and answered, as if I thought the question the most natural one in the world, that I went to the matinée every Saturday, and sometimes to an evening performance. I said papa would only let me go in the evening if it was Shakspere or something very good; but that my married sister, Mrs. George R. Verbeck, always gave me