igure and
high carriage.

"You shouldn't give nicknames, Sister Thecla."

The last speaker was a sister with an austere face and gray eyes which
had no end of cold-blooded religious enthusiasm in them.

"I need not give you a nickname," retorted Thecla to the last speaker;
"Brother Friedsam did that when he called you Jael. You are just the
kind of person to drive a tent-nail through a man's head."

"If he were the enemy of the Church of God," said Jael, in a voice as
hard as it was sincere.

Then the talk drifted back to the singing school and Brother Friedsam's
severity.

"But why doesn't the Hofcavalier speak?" again persisted Thecla.

"When the Hofcavalier speaks, it will be to Brother Friedsam himself,"
answered Tabea.

The temerity of this proposition took Thecla's breath, but it set the
storm a-going more vigorously than before among the sisterhood, who,
having found somebody ready to bell the cat, grew eager to have the cat
belled. Only Sister Jael, who for lack of voice was not included in
either of the three choruses of the sisterhood, stoutly defended
Brother Friedsam, thinking, perhaps, that it was not a bad thing to
have the conceit of the singers reduced; indeed, she was especially
pleased that Tabea, the unsurpassed singer of the sisters' gallery,
should have suffered rebuke.

At length it was agreed that Tabea should tell Brother Friedsam that
the sisters did not intend to go to singing school again.

Then Tabea lifted up her dark head and regarded the circle of women in
white garments about her.

"You are all brave now, but when Brother Friedsam shakes his finger at
you, you will every one of you submit as though you were a set of
redemptioners bought with his money. When I tell Brother Friedsam that
I shall not come to singing school, I shall stick to it. He may get his
music performed by some one else. He will not call me a 'ninny' again."

"There spoke the Hofcavalier," giggled Thecla.

"Sister Tabea," said Jael, "if you go on as you are going, you will end
by leaving the convent and breaking your vows. Mark my words."

"I am going to finish this turtledove first, though," said Tabea gayly.

It was finally agreed that if Tabea would speak to the director on
behalf of the sisterhood, the sisters would resolutely stand by their
threat, and that they would absent themselves from Brother Friedsam's
music drills long enough to have him understand that they were not to
be treated like ch