Mary had not forgotten
one of the kind faces--and all those who remained she loved dearly; yet
she was leaving them to-day. Already it was time. She had wished to come
out into the garden alone for this last walk, and to wear the habit of
her novitiate, though she had voluntarily given up the right to it
forever. She must go in and dress for the world, as she had not dressed
for years which seemed twice their real length. She must go in, and bid
them all goodbye--Reverend Mother, and the nuns, and novices, and the
schoolgirls, of whose number she had once been.
She stood still, looking toward the far end of the path, her back turned
toward the gray face of the convent.
"Goodbye, dear old sundial, that has told so many of my hours," she
said. "Goodbye, sweet rose-trees that I planted, and all the others I've
loved so long. Goodbye, dear laurel bushes, that know my thoughts.
Goodbye, everything."
Her arms hung at her sides, lost in the folds of her veil. Slowly tears
filled her eyes, but did not fall until a delicate sound of
light-running feet on grass made her start, and wink the tears away.
They rolled down her white cheeks in four bright drops, which she
hastily dried with the back of her hand; and no more tears followed.
When she was sure of herself, she turned and saw a girl running to her
from the house, a pretty, brown-haired girl in a blue dress that looked
very frivolous and worldly in contrast to Mary's habit. But the bushes
and the sundial, and the fading flowers that tapestried the ivy on the
old wall, were used to such frivolities.
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