“And this is your little assistant?” said Good Mother, suddenly, turning a smile of angelic brightness upon Julia.  “Well, come to mass by all means, both of you.  And pray for our poor children, dear child; we are always in need of prayers.”

“You must have extraordinary experiences here,” Miss Toland said.

“And extraordinary compensations,” said the nun.  “Of course, some of our poor children are very wild—­at first.  We do what we can.  I had a little pet of mine here until yesterday, Alice, ten years old; she is—­”

“Ten!” ejaculated Miss Toland.

“Oh, yes, my dear!  And younger; she was but eight when she came.  What I was going to say was that her mother took her away yesterday, and Sister Philip Neri was amused to see how sad I was to have her go.  She reminded me that when Alice first came here she had bitten my hand to the bone, so that I could not use it for three weeks.  Ah, well!” And Good Mother gave the sweet toneless laugh of the religious.  “That is not the worst of it—­a clean bite on the hand!”

Miss Toland bought an alarm clock on the way home, and she and Julia went to early mass on the very next morning.  Julia found this first experience an ordeal; she and Miss Toland were in a side pew before the big gong struck, and Julia did not raise her eyes from her book as the girls filed in.  The steady rustle of frocks and shuffle of feet made her feel cold and sick.

A day or two later she could watch them, although never without profound emotion.  Two hundred girls, ranging in years from ten to twenty, with roughly clipped hair, and the hideous gray-green checked aprons of the institution.  Two hundred faces, sullen or vacuous, pretty, silly faces, hard faces, faces tragically hopeless and pale.  These young things were offenders against the law, shut away here behind iron bars for the good of the commonwealth.  Julia, whose life had made her wise beyond her years, watched them and pondered.  Here was an almost babyish face; what did that innocent-looking twelve-year-old think of life, now that she had thrown her own away?  Here was a sickly looking girl a few years older, coughing incessantly and ashen cheeked; why had some woman borne her in deathly anguish, loved her and watched her through the years that least need loving and watching?  This thing that they had all done—­this treasure they had all thrown away—­ what did they think about it?

She would come out very soberly into the convent garden, and walk home, through the delicious airs of a spring morning, without speaking, perhaps to break out, over her belated coffee: 

“Oh, I think it’s horrible—­their being shut up there, the poor little things!”

“They have sensible work, plenty to eat, and they’re safe,” Miss Toland might answer severely.  “And that’s a great deal more than they deserve!”

“Nobody worried about them until it was too late,” Julia suggested once, in great distress.  “Lots of them never would have done anything wrong if they’d had work and food then!”