the foot of an
oak, and, half sitting, half lying, began to think over her wrongs.

"I guess if I was dead they'd be sorry," she reflected. "They'd hunt
and hunt for me, and not know where I was. And at last they'd come up
here, and find me dead, with a tear on my cheek, and then they'd know
how badly they had made me feel, and their hearts would nearly break.
I don't believe father would ever smile again. He'd be like the king
in the 'Second Reader':--

'But waves went o'er his son's bright hair,
He never smiled again.'

Only, I'm a daughter, and it would be leaves and not waves! Mother,
she'd cry and cry, and as for that old Wealthy"--but Eyebright felt it
difficult to imagine what Wealthy would do under these circumstances.
Her thoughts drifted another way.

"I might go into a convent instead. That would be better, I guess. I'd
be a novice first, with a white veil and a cross and a rosary, and I'd
look so sweet and holy that all the other children,--no, there
wouldn't be any other children,--never mind!--I'd be lovely, anyhow.
But I'd be a Protestant always! I wouldn't want to be a Catholic and
have to kiss the Pope's old toe all the time! Then by and by I should
take that awful black veil. Then I could never come out any more--not
ever! And I should kneel in the chapel all the time as motionless as a
marble figure. That would be beautiful." Eyebright had never been able
to sit still for half an hour together in her life, but that made no
difference in her enjoyment of this idea. "The abbess will be
beautiful, too, but stern and unrelenting, and she'll say 'Daughters'
when she speaks to us nuns, and we shall say 'Holy Mother' when we
speak to her. It'll be real nice. We shan't have to do any darning,
but just embroidery in our cells and wax flowers. Wealthy'll want to
come in and see me, I know, but I shall just tell the porter that I
don't want her, not ever. 'She's a heretic,' I shall say to the
porter, and he'll lock the door the minute he sees her coming. Then
she'll be mad! The Abbess and _Mere Genefride_"--Eyebright had just
read for the fourth time Mrs. Sherwood's exciting novel called "The
Nun," so her imaginary convent was modelled exactly after the one
there described--"the abbess and _Mere Genefride_ will always be
spying about and listening in the passage to hear what we say, when we
sit in our cells embroidering and telling secrets, but me and my
Pauline--no, I won't call her Pauline--Rosal