“Oh, it’s plain I am very different from you,” but he said it with a kind of uneasy defiance.  “Besides, in any case, I shall do it for my sister’s sake.”

“Oh, you have a sister?”

He nodded.

“How long since you left her?”

“It’s a good while now.”

“Perhaps your sister won’t want that particular home any more than you when you two meet again.”  Then, seeming not to notice the shade on her companion’s face:  “I promised my children they should sing for you.  Do you mind?  Will your friend come in, too?” And, looking from the door after the Colonel and the Father as they turned to rejoin them:  “He is odd, that big friend of yours,” she said—­quite like a human being, as the Boy thought instantly.

“He’s not odd, I assure you.”

“He called me ‘madam.’” She spoke with a charming piqued childishness.

“You see, he didn’t know your name.  What is your name?”

“Sister Winifred.”

“But your real name?” he said, with the American’s insistence on his own point of view.

“That is my only name,” she answered with dignity, and led the way back into the schoolroom.  Another, older, nun was there, and when the others rejoined them they made the girls sing.

“Now we have shown you enough,” said Father Richmond, rising; “boasted to you enough of the very little we are able to accomplish here.  We must save something for to-morrow.”

“Ah, to-morrow we take to the trail again,” said the Colonel, and added his “Good-bye, madam.”

Sister Winifred, seeing he expected it, gave him her hand.

“Good-bye, and thank you for coming.”

“For your poor,” he said shyly, as he turned away and left a gift in her palm.

“Thank you for showing us all this,” the Boy said, lingering, but not daring to shake hands.  “It—­it seems very wonderful.  I had no idea a mission meant all this.”

“Oh, it means more—­more than anything you can see.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

In the early evening the reception-room was invaded by the lads’ school for their usual Sunday night entertainment.  Very proudly these boys and young men sang their glees and choruses, played the fiddle, recited, even danced.

“Pity Mac isn’t here!”

“Awful pity.  Sunday, too.”

Brother Etienne sang some French military songs, and it came out that he had served in the French army.  Father Roget sang, also in French, explaining himself with a humourous skill in pantomime that set the room in a roar.

“Well,” said the Colonel when he stood up to say good-night, “I haven’t enjoyed an evening so much for years.”

“It is very early still,” said Father Brachet, wrinkling up his face in a smile.

“Ah, but we have to make such an early start.”

The Colonel went up to bed, leaving the Boy to go to Father Richmond’s room to look at his Grammar of the Indian language.