When the two pretty grown ones had gone away, then Sister Angela had
nodded her head at the row of little girls, so that they might know
that they might go on eating their cakes, for of course the little
girls knew that they must hold their cakes in their hands and wait,
and not eat, when Sister Angela had shaken her head gently at them
while she talked to the two pretty ones. The little brown birds
seemed to know, too, that they could come back to the gravel to look
for crumbs again.

Then, as the little girls were again eating their cakes, one little
girl said: ``Sister Angela, were they Sisters?''

Sister Angela said: ``No, they are not Sisters.''

Then another little girl asked: ``Sister Angela, what were they,
then?''

Sister Angela said: ``They are only just ladies.''

Then always after that Bessie Bell and the other little girls were
glad when Only-Just-Ladies came to see them.

The sun shone nearly always, or it seemed to the little girls that
it nearly always shone, out in that large garden where they could
play the hour in the sand, and where they could spend one hour
eating their cakes with their feet on the gravel, and where they
could walk behind Sister Justina on all the shell-bordered walks
around the beds (but they must not step on the beds)--just one hour.
If a rain came it always did surprise them: those little girls were