cold, so cheerless compared to yours. You remember the convent-church at
St. Leonard's--the incense, the vestments, the white-veiled
congregation--oh, how beautiful it was; we shall never be so happy
again!'

'Yes, indeed; and how cross we used to think those dear nuns. You
remember Sister Mary, how she used to lecture Violet for getting up to
look out of the windows. What used she to say? 'Do you want, miss, to be
taken for a housemaid or scullery-maid, staring at people in that way as
they pass?''

'Yes, yes; that's exactly how she used to speak,' exclaimed Cecilia,
laughing. And, as the girls advanced through the oakwood, they helped
each other through the briers and over the trunks of fallen trees,
talking, the while, of their past life, which now seemed to them but one
long, sweet joy. A reference to how May Gould used to gallop the pony
round and round the field at the back of the convent was interrupted by
the terrifying sound of a cock-pheasant getting up from some bracken
under their very feet; and, amid the scurrying of rabbits in couples and
half-dozens, modest allusion was made to the girls who had been expelled
in '75. Absorbed in the sweetness of the past, the girls mused, until
they emerged from the shade of the woods into the glare and dust of the
highroad. Then came a view of rocky country, with harvesters working in
tiny fields, and then the great blue background of the Clare Mountains
was suddenly unfolded. A line and a bunch of trees indicated the Brennan
domain. The gate-lodge was in ruins, and the weed-grown avenue was
covered with cow-dung.

'Which of the girls do you like best?' said Alice, who wished to cease
thinking of the poverty in which the spinsters lived.