Mena. She looked as happy as Vera looked bored! Conversation was
not possible while a missionary memoir was being read aloud, but the
history of Mother Constance, once Lady Herbert Somerville, but then
head at Dearport, and founder of the Daughter Sisterhood at
Carrigaboola. To the Merrifields it was intensely interesting, and
also to Magdalen; but all the time she could see demonstrations
passing between Paula and Sister Mena, a nice-looking girl, much
embellished by the setting of the hood and veil, as if the lending of
a pair of scissors or the turning of a hem were an act of tender
admiration. So sweet a look came out on Paula's face that she longed
to awaken the like. Vera meantime looked as if her only consolation
lay in the neighbourhood of a window, whence she could see up the
street, as soon as she had found whispers to Mysie Merrifield treated
as impossible.

The party at the Goyle had begun to fall into regular habits, and
struggles were infrequent. There was study in the forenoon, walks or
cycle expeditions in the afternoon, varied by the lessons in music
and in art, which Vera and Paula attended on Wednesdays and Fridays,
the one in the morning, the other after dinner. It was possible to
go to St. Andrew's matins at ten o'clock before the drawing class,
and to St. Kenelm's at five, after the music was over. Magdalen,
whenever it was possible, went with her sisters on their bicycles to
St. Andrew's, and sometimes devised errands that she might join them
at St. Kenelm's, but neither could always be done by the head of the
household. And she could perceive that her company was not specially
welcome.

Valetta, the only one of the Clipstone family whose drawing was worth
cultivating, used to ride into Rockstone, escorted by her brother