much. However, she thought it would be nice to go
and see Madeleine, and I thought so too.

It was a short journey in the train, and the place where the Sisterhood
live is perfectly lovely, the most beautiful I ever saw, with quantities
of great trees on a flowery lawn sloping down to the river.

I was wondering what my cousin would be like--the only cousin I've got
in the world; and though Mamma said she must be pretty, if she was
anything like her mother, I didn't expect her to be half as pretty as
she really is.

We surprised her as much as she did us, for naturally she expected Mamma
to be like other aunts, which she isn't at all--now; and evidently she
considered me a _curiosity_. But she was very sweet, and when she found
Mamma didn't want to be called Aunt Kathryn, she tried hard always to
"Kitty" her.

We only intended to spend the day, but it turned out that the time of
our visit was rather critical for Maida. She was in the act of having
her twentieth birthday; and it seemed that in her father's will he had
"stipulated" (that's the word the cousin-Mother-Superior used) that his
daughter should be sent to travel in Europe when she was twenty, for a
whole year.

The reason of the stipulation was, that though he didn't care for Maida
as most fathers care for their children, he was a very just man, and was
afraid, after living so long in the Sisterhood his daughter might wish
to join the Order, without knowing enough about the outside world to
make up her mind whether it truly was her vocation for good and all.
That was why she was to go to Europe; for when you're twenty-one you can
become a novice in the Sisterhood, if you like.

The Mother Superior didn't really want Maida to go one bit. It was easy
to see her anxiety to have the "dear child safe in the fold." But Maida
wasn't to inherit a penny of her father's money if she didn't obey his
will, which wouldn't suit the Sisterhood at all; so the Mother had to
hustle round and think how to pack Maida off for the year.

When we happened to arrive on the scene, she thought we were like
Moses's ram caught in the bushes. She told Mamma the whole story--(a
ramrod of a lady with a white face, a white dress, and a long, floating
white veil, she was) asking right out if we'd take Maida with us to
Europe.

Mamma didn't like the idea of being chaperon for such a girl as Maida;
but it was her own sister's daughter, and Mamma is as good-natured as a
Mellin's Food Ba