"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage," I quoted. Quoting poetry in a snow-storm while you
stumble through a woodland behind a girl who shows
no interest in either your prose or your rhymes has its
embarrassments, particularly when you are breathing a
trifle hard from the swift pace your auditor is leading
you.
"I have heard that before," she said, half-turning her
face, then laughing as she hastened on.
Her brilliant cheeks were a delight to the eye. The
snow swirled about her, whitened the crown of her red
cap and clung to her shoulders. Have you ever seen
snow-crystals gleam, break, dissolve in fair, soft, storm-blown
hair? Do you know how a man will pledge his
soul that a particular flake will never fade, never cease
to rest upon a certain flying strand over a girlish temple?
And he loses-his heart and his wager-in a
breath! If you fail to understand these things, and are
furthermore unfamiliar with the fact that the color in
the cheeks of a girl who walks abroad in a driving snow-storm
marks the favor of Heaven itself, then I waste
time, and you will do well to rap at the door of another
inn.
"I'd rather missed you," I said; "and, really, I should
have been over to apologize if I hadn't been afraid."
"Sister Theresa is rather fierce," she declared. "And
we're not allowed to receive gentlemen callers,-it says
so in the catalogue."
"So I imagined. I trust Sister Theresa is improving."
[Illustration: She marched before me, her hands in her pockets.] "Yes; thank you."
"And Miss Devereux,-she is quite well, I hope?"
She turned her head as though to listen more carefully,
and her step slackened for a moment; then she
hurried blithely forward.
"Oh, she's always well, I believe."
"You know her, of course."
"Oh, rather! She gives us music lessons."
"So Miss Devereux is the music-teacher, is she?
Should you call her a popular teacher?"
"The girls call her"-she seemed moved to mirth by
the recollection-"Miss Prim and Prosy."
"Ugh!" I exclaimed sympathetically. "Tall and hungry-looking,
with long talons that pound the keys with
grim delight. I know the sort."
"She's a sight!"-and my guide laughed approvingly.
"But we have to take her; she's part of the treatment."
"You speak of St. Agatha's as though it were a sanatorium."
"Oh, it's not so bad! I've seen worse."
"Where do most of the students come from,-all what
you call Hoosiers?"
"Oh, no! They're from all over-Cincinnati, Chicago,
Cleveland, Indianapolis."
"What the magazines call the Middle West."
"I believe that is so. The bishop addressed us once
as the flower of the Middle West, and made us really
wish he'd come again."
We were approaching the gate. Her indifference to
the storm delighted me. Here, I thought in my admiration,
is a real product of the western world. I felt that
we had made strides toward such a comradeship as it is
proper should exist between a school-girl in her teens
and a male neighbor of twenty-seven. I was-going
back to English fiction-the young squire walking home
with the curate's pretty young daughter and conversing
with fine condescension.