The pretty Sister Ursula, who had only just finished her novitiate, was as white as a sheet. Her breath came thickly and quick as though she bore a great burden up hill. A great sigh made her comely shoulders rise and fall. ‘Blessed Virgin,’ she cried. ‘Ah, ye ask too much; I did not know; God help me, I did not know,’ and her grey eyes filled with sudden tears, and she dropped her head on her arms on the table, and sobbed aloud. Then cried out Sister Katherine, who looked as old and dead as a twig dropped from a tree of last autumn, and at whom the younger Sisters privily mocked, ‘It is the wars, the wars, the cursed wars. I have held his head in this lap, I tell you; I have kissed his soul into mine. But now he lies dead, and his pretty limbs all dropped away into earth. Holy Mother, have pity on me. I shall never kiss his sweet lips again or look into his jolly eyes. My heart is broken long since. Holy Mother! Holy Mother!’ ‘He must come oftener,’ said a plump Sister of thirty, with a little nose turned up at the end, eyes black as sloes and lips round as a plum. ‘I go to the orchard day after day, and gather my lap full of apples. He is my darling. Why does he not come? I look for him every time that I gather the ripe apples. He used to come; but that was in the spring, and Our Lady knows that is long ago. Will it not be spring again soon? I have gathered many ripe apples.’ Sister Margarita rocked herself to and fro in her seat and crossed her arms on her breast. She was singing quietly to herself. ‘Lulla, lullay, thou tiny little child, Lulla, lullay, lullay; Suck at my breast that am thereat beguiled, Lulla, lullay, lullay.’ She moaned to herself, ‘I have seen the village women go to the well, carrying their babies with them, and they laugh as they go by on the way. Their babies hold them tight round the neck, and their mothers comfort them, saying, “Hey, hey, my little son; hey, hey, my sweeting.” Christ and the blessed Saints know that I have never felt a baby’s little hand in my bosom--and now I shall die without it, for I am old and past the age of bearing children. ‘Lulla, lullay, thou tiny little boy, Lulla, lullay, lullay; To feel thee suck doth soothe my great annoy, Lulla, lullay, lullay.’