When I had taken my chair the housekeeper took her seat and introduced me to the other women. As each name was called the owner would glance up at me, nod her head, and then drop her eyes back to her plate of soup. Never a smile, not one word. The soup finished, while they waited for the next course I noticed that three or four women spoke to their next neighbors, always so low that they seemed to whisper. Was this the effect of the presence of a stranger? I wondered. If so it was up to me to break the ice. Selecting for my first attack a handsome woman with red hair, who sat just across the table from me, I inquired in what capacity she was connected with St. Rose. She was the “mother” of a cottage, she informed me. All present excepting the housekeeper, the seamstress, and myself were either cottage mothers or their assistants. Yes, they took all their meals in the dining-room. The children ate in their cottages—that is, excepting the large girls serving us. They took their meals in the kitchen with the cook. By a persistent effort, addressing directly first one woman and then another, I succeeded in arousing quite a buzz of conversation. Suddenly silence. Even sentences already begun broke off half uttered, as though the tongues had become suddenly paralyzed. Puzzled, I glanced around the table. The eyes of every woman, even the housekeeper, were fastened on her plate; more puzzled, I glanced around the room. Mrs. Bossman and Miss Pugh had entered and were taking their seats at a small table near the door. After this the women seated at the long table opened their lips only for food. At the small table the matron and her assistant conversed in subdued tones. After making two or three remarks in the hope of reviving the conversation I gave up. Judging by their faces, I might as well have tried to make myself entertaining at a table of deaf-mutes. So to the end of the meal—depressed and depressing silence. After lunch, on my expressing a wish to be made useful, the assistant matron invited me to go with her to one of the cottages. This “mother” was having her afternoon off. Much to my surprise I found that the attractiveness of St. Rose did not extend beyond the building occupied by the matron and her immediate staff. Desolate is the only word that adequately describes the cottage to which Miss Pugh conducted me. Never a picture on the walls, not a flower, nor a book. Bare walls of a forlorn dingy tint, and dingier floors. Even the bewhiskered gentlemen in their black frames would have been an improvement.