‘Oh!’ Agnes gave a cry of remonstrance and protest. It did not hurt her to be told not to speak to him any more--but not to go to little Emmy! She was not sure herself that it was all for little Emmy’s sake, and this made her still more unhappy, but not willing to relinquish the expedition. Sister Mary Jane, however, took no notice of the cry. She put a heap of exercises into Agnes’s hands to be corrected. ‘They must all be done to-night,’ she said, calculating with benevolent severity that this would occupy all the available time till bedtime. ‘One nail drives out another,’ she said to herself, being an accomplished person, with strange tongues at her command. And thus she sent the culprit away, exhausted with tears and supplied with work. ‘I will send you some tea to St. Monica, where you can be quiet,’ she said. And there Agnes toiled all the evening over her exercises, and had not a moment to spare. ‘Occupation, occupation,’ said the Sister to herself; ‘that is the only thing. She will do very well if she has no time to think.’ But was that the ideal life? I doubt if Sister Mary Jane thought so; but she was old enough to understand the need of such props, which Agnes was still young enough to have indignantly repudiated. For her part, Agnes felt that a little more thought would save her. If she could get vain imaginations out of her head, and those scraps of poetry, and bits of foolish novels, and replace them with real thought--thought upon serious subjects, something worthy the name--how soon would all those confusing, tantalising shadows flee away! But, in the meantime, it is undeniable that the girl left this interview with a sense of relief, such as it is to be supposed, is one of the chief reasons why confession continues to hold its place, named or nameless, in all religious communions more or less. Sister Mary Jane was not the spiritual director of the community, though I think the place would have very well become her; but it was undeniable that the mind of Agnes was lightened after she had poured forth her burdens; also that her sin did not look quite so heinous as it had done before; also that the despair which had enveloped her, and of which the consciousness that she must never so sin again formed no inconsiderable part, was imperceptibly dispelled, and the future as well as the past made less gloomy. Perhaps, if any very searching inspection had been made into those recesses of her soul which were but imperfectly known to Agnes herself, it might have been read there that there was no longer any crushing weight of certainty as to the absolute cessation of the sin; but that was beyond the reach of investigation. Anyhow, she had no time to think any more. Never had exercises so bad come under the young teacher’s inspection; her brain reeled over the mis-spellings, the misunderstandings. Healthy human ignorance, indifference, opacity, desire to get done anyhow, could not have shown to greater advantage.