The friends whom I loved are scattered far and wide. When Tony died, she took with her the sound of laughter into the silent land, and all things have seemed more sober since she left. To those who live, these pages will, I hope, bring back the sentiment of our early days. We made one another's world then,--a world full of adventures, and imaginings, and sweet absurdities that no one of us would now wish less absurd. Our successors to-day know more than we knew (they could not well know less), they have lectures, and enamelled bathtubs, and "Essays in Criticism;" but do they live their lives as vehemently as we lived ours; do they hold the secrets of childhood inviolate in their hearts as we held them in ours; are they as untainted by the commonplace, as remote from the obvious, as we always were; and will they have as vivid a picture of their convent days to look back upon, as the one we look at now? A. R. Contents Marianus 1 The Convent Stage 36 In Retreat 72 Un Congé sans Cloche 107 Marriage Vows 148 Reverend Mother's Feast 183 The Game of Love 220 Marianus I do not know how Marianus ever came to leave his native land, nor what turn of fate brought him to flutter the dovecotes of a convent school. At eleven, one does not often ask why things happen, because nothing seems strange enough to provoke the question. It was enough for me--it was enough for all of us--that one Sunday morning he appeared in little Peter's place, lit the candles on the altar, and served Mass with decent and devout propriety. Our customary torpor of cold and sleepiness--Mass was at seven, and the chapel unheated--yielded to a warm glow of excitement. I craned my white-veiled head (we wore black veils throughout the week and white on Sundays) to see how Elizabeth was taking this delightful novelty. _She_ was busy passing her prayer-book, with something evidently written on the fly-leaf, to Emily Goring on the bench ahead. Emily, oblivious of consequences, was making telegraphic signals to Marie. Lilly and Viola Milton knelt staring open-mouthed at the altar. Tony was giggling softly. Only Annie Churchill, her eyes fixed on her Ursuline Manual, was thumping her breast remorsefully, in unison with the priest's "mea maxima culpa." There was something about Annie's attitude of devotion which always gave one a distaste for piety.