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The Mother-Superior thought, as her composed eyes swept over the tall, spare, broad-shouldered figure and the strong, lean, tanned face, with its alert, hazel eyes, nose of the falcon-beak order, and firm straight mouth unconcealed by the short-clipped moustache: "This is a brave man." The great of soul are not slow to find each other out. These two recognised each other at meeting.
"I wish they would go home." "I have sent them." "You have? Home to Milwaukee?" "Yes." "Thank God!" He soon began to mend. Yet it was weeks before he could leave the house. When one day he reëntered the hospital, still pale and faint, he was prompt to express to the Mother-Superior the comfort he had felt in his sickness to know that his brother physician had sent those Richlings to their kindred.
From east, west, north, and south the deadly iron messengers had come, making sore havoc of this poor house of Christ. "When the walls fall about our ears, Colonel," the Mother-Superior had declared, "it will be time to leave them." They were lacework now, with a confusion of bare rafters overhead, over which streamed, as if in mockery, the Red-Cross Flag.
And the mother-superior, being a sensible woman, agreed to engage a certain number of teachers from the outer world. Mademoiselle Brun was vaguely entitled an instructress, while Mademoiselle Denise Lange bore the proud title of mathematical mistress.
She snorted rebelliously: "His mother wants him down here.... And what is Heaven to little Dierck, when he could be sailing his boat in the river-pools, and playing at driving the span?" But she let the Mother-Superior take him from her, and dropped her great arms doggedly at her sides, watching still dry-eyed as they laid him down, and Saxham stooped above him, feeling at the pulseless heart.
"He did so, Reverend Mother," whispered the timid Irish girl, who stood in overwhelming awe of the majestic personality before her. "'Ask the Mother-Superior will she consent to receive me? says he. 'If she won't, say that she must. Says I: 'Sir, I'd not drame to presume give Herself a message that bowld, but if you'll please to wait, I'll tell her what you're after saying."
Very soon Inez determined to renounce the world, which I think never had any great attractions for her, and entered a sisterhood of an extremely strict Order in Natal, where, added to her many merits, her considerable possessions made her very welcome indeed. Once in after years I saw her again when she expected before long to become the Mother-Superior of her convent.
"Eating is a habit," agreed the Mother-Superior, "which even the most rigid disciplinarians of the body have found difficult to break." His mouth straightened sternly under the short-clipped brown moustache. Here was a woman who dared to bandy words with the Officer Commanding the Garrison. He drew a shabby notebook from a breast-pocket, and consulted it.
Virtuous as Sarah have I lain in the marriage-bed never a sly look for another, and my husband with dropsy-legs as thick as boomstammen, and sixty years upon his loins. Thou knewest, and yet the joy of my life is taken from me. Where wert Thou, O God of Israel, when they killed my little Dierck?" The Mother-Superior leaned to her, and threw a strong, tender arm about the fleshy shoulders.
The Mother-Superior wheeled the perambulator near, and the Colonel, rising, laid the now soundly-sleeping boy back upon his cushions. "What mysteries children are!" he said, as the Mother replaced the light covering, screening the sleeping face with tender, careful hands from sun and flies.
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