ing
propensities, for the landlady turned it over and read,--

LOUIS,--Here is the ring. I return it to you. I heard you needed it.
I hope it comes not too late. SOPHIE.

"The ring, where?" muttered the landlady. There it was, clasped
between her fingers on her bosom,--a bosom white and cold, under a cold
happy face. Christmas had indeed dawned for Miss Sophie.

SISTER JOSEPHA

Sister Josepha told her beads mechanically, her fingers numb with the
accustomed exercise. The little organ creaked a dismal "O Salutaris,"
and she still knelt on the floor, her white-bonneted head nodding
suspiciously. The Mother Superior gave a sharp glance at the tired
figure; then, as a sudden lurch forward brought the little sister back
to consciousness, Mother's eyes relaxed into a genuine smile.

The bell tolled the end of vespers, and the sombre-robed nuns filed out
of the chapel to go about their evening duties. Little Sister Josepha's
work was to attend to the household lamps, but there must have been as
much oil spilled upon the table to-night as was put in the vessels.
The small brown hands trembled so that most of the wicks were trimmed
with points at one corner which caused them to smoke that night.

"Oh, cher Seigneur," she sighed, giving an impatient polish to a
refractory chimney, "it is wicked and sinful, I know, but I am so
tired. I can't be happy and sing any more. It doesn't seem right for
le bon Dieu to have me all cooped up here with nothing to see but stray
visitors, and always the same old work, teaching those mean little
girls to sew, and washing and filling the same old lamps. Pah!" And
she polished the chimney with a sudden vigorous jerk which threatened
destruction.

They were rebellious prayers that the red mouth murmured that night,
and a restless figure that tossed on the hard dormitory bed. Sister
Dominica called from her couch to know if Sister Josepha were ill.

"No," was the somewhat short response; then a muttered, "Why can't they
let me alone for a minute? That pale-eyed Sister Dominica never
sleeps; that's why she is so ugly."

About fifteen years before this night some one had brought to the
orphan asylum connected with this convent, du Sacre Coeur, a round,
dimpled bit of three-year-old humanity, who regarded the world from a
pair of gravely twinkling black eyes, and only took a chubby thumb out
of a rosy mouth long enough to answer in monosyllabic French. It was a
ch