Agnes went into the large room which was called the refectory--the banqueting-hall of the establishment--where the air was heavy with tea and bread and butter, and the long tables, partially cleared, still bore traces of the repast. It was a large room; the walls enlivened with Spiritual pictures, and rich with lines of coloured bricks unplastered. The servants of the House were not of a very superior class, as may be supposed, and to see them pushing about the cups and saucers, rattling down the heavy trays full of fragments, and hustling each other about the tables, was not exhilarating. How closed in and confined everything looked, how dreary the atmosphere, the evening so much more advanced than out of doors! Agnes tried to drink with contentment her lukewarm cup of tea, and to think with satisfaction of the middle girls who awaited her in St. Cecilia. But it was astonishing how difficult she felt it to do this. The summer afternoon skies, the soft breathing of the spring air, the long distances--though they were but lines of streets--and wide atmosphere--though it was tinged with London smoke--which lay outside these walls, had suggested sentiments so different. The sentiments which they would have suggested to Sister Mary Jane would have been quite unlike those that filled the mind of Agnes. She would have said it was a sweet evening, and hurried in to work. The smell of the tea did not sicken her, nor the sight of the used cups and the stains here and there on the cloth, where an unruly child (doomed to lose her marks for neatness) had pulled over her cup. She thought that to superintend the middle girls at relaxation was as pleasant an occupation as could be found--and that a walk through the streets was a weariness to the flesh. As for Mr. Oswald Meredith, except that it was very nice of him to have given such a good subscription to the House, she would not have considered him worthy a glance--her mind was busy about other things. She had to take the girls for an hour before evensong, and afterwards had to look over their exercises and inspect the books, and hear the reports of the teachers. Araminta Blunt, who was in punishment for talking, and Marian Smith, who had lost five marks for untidiness, were of more interest to her than all the ideals in the world. She was very kind to fanciful Agnes, as well as to everybody else, but she had no time to indulge in fancies for her own part. She gave her directions to one and another as she went along the passage. There was not a minute of her valuable time which she could afford to lose. Agnes thought of all this with a sigh as she went to St. Cecilia, where the middle girls awaited her. Would she ever be as satisfied with her work, as pleased with her surroundings, as Sister Mary Jane? And was it not her duty to endeavour to make herself so? For she could not say to herself as she had done at home that this was mere carelessness and apathetic resignation to the common course of events.