Page:The strange experiences of Tina Malone.djvu/39

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One day I had a rosary given me.

I don't know what suggested it. She had always taken an interest in me—an affectionate interest I might say—the little nun who looked after the door and the telephone at the convent where I worked.

Her religion was her one thought. On the table in front of her where she sat during the day was a little coloured figure of St. Joseph.

Here she sat all day. It was called Mother Joseph's corner, and here it was she knelt at mid-day when the convent bells rang the Angelus.

She was very devout and I loved to let her talk to me of her religion. She had such faith in prayer, in purgatory, and hell fires. But she believed that by prayer we could assuage the suffering.

I was a protestant. She knew it, for each time as she talked, by some little word or way, I let her see that nothing would make me forsake the faith my mother's family and ours had been brought up in. But she still persisted and on fete days she took me always to see the convent chapel.

I loved to go but always with a feeling which I took trouble to convey that I loved the lights and flowers and quiet of the place as one who would love it in any church and not as she did.

I had seen it many times and it never failed to throw a feeling of holiness and quiet peace over me as I stood at the door, or, as she eagerly bade me, knelt for a moment on one of the prie-dieux.

There were the days when the white altar was all aglow with its candles ranged in different heights and flowers of pale pink and blue in the vases. There was the little red light hanging before the altar—the little red light which stood for the "Sacred Heart of Jesus." There was the organ, breaking the peaceful silence with chords and quiet melodies. There were the times of the "forty hours watch" with the quiet kneeling figures—one nun each side of the aisle and one girl at each side, kneeling at her prie-dieu with bent veiled head, chosen to take her share in relieving—Then there was the hour of Benediction, when the whole school walked silently in in steady order and took their places, the nuns behind them in the back rows, and the officiating priest, with the afternoon sunlight streaming through the coloured windows and resting on his head, as, with his back turned to us, he muttered through his prayers, his face upturned to the altar. There were the hymns with