a
very wide choice of adorers, there were too many other girls. And
affairs of the heart, and offers of marriage, occurred much more often
in books than in life.

Two or three times a week Miss Toland liked to rise early and go to the
beautiful eight o'clock mass at St. Anne's, the big institution for
unfortunate girls that was not far from The Alexander Toland
Neighbourhood House. There was no church in the immediate vicinity, and
in asking for permission to come to the convent chapel, Miss Toland had
felt herself doing no extraordinary thing, had felt almost within her
rights.

But the good nuns in charge of St. Anne's had whetted her appetite for
the experience by interposing unexpected objections. Their charges, they
explained, about two hundred in number, were very impressionable, very
easily excited. A stranger in the chapel meant a sensation. Of course,
the lay workers of the institution and the old people from the Home
across the way sometimes came in, but they were so soberly dressed.
Perhaps if Miss Toland and Miss Page would dress in dark things, and
assure Good Mother that they would not speak to the girls--

"Oh, certainly!" Miss Toland had agreed eagerly. Julia, awed by the
airy, sombre interior of the great building, the closed doors, the
far-away echoes of footsteps and subdued voices, was a little pale.

"And this is your little assistant?" said Good Mother, suddenly, turning
a smile of angelic brightness upon Julia. "Well, come to mass by all
means, both of you. And pray for our poor children, dear child; we are
always in need of prayers."

"You must have extraordinary experiences here," Miss Toland said.

"And extraordinary compensations," said the nun. "Of course, some of our
poor children are very wild--at first. We do what we can. I had a little
pet of mine here until yesterday, Alice, ten years old; she is--"

"_Ten_!" ejaculated Miss Toland.

"Oh, yes, my dear! And younger; she was but eight when she came. What I
was going to say was that her mother took her away yesterday, and Sister
Philip Neri was amused to see how sad I was to have her go. She reminded
me that when Alice first came here she had bitten my hand to the bone,
so that I could not use it for three weeks. Ah, well!" And Good Mother
gave the sweet toneless laugh of the religious. "That is not the worst
of it--a clean bite on the hand!"

Miss Toland bought an alarm clock on the way home, and she and Julia
went to early mas