"But oh, my dear!" she exclaimed--"What a little school-guy they have made of you! You must have grown taller, surely, since November when I saw you last? Your frock is ever so much too short!"

"I don't think I've grown a bit,"--said Cicely, glancing down at her own legs disparagingly--"But my frock wore shabby at the bottom, and the nuns had a fresh hem turned up all round. That reduced its length by a couple of inches at least. I told them as modestly as I could that my ankles were too vastily exposed, but they said it didn't matter, as I was only a day-boarder."

Maryllia's eyebrows went up perplexedly.

"I don't see what that has to do with it,"--she said--"Would you have preferred to live in the Convent altogether, dear?"

"Grand merci!" and Cicely made an expressive grimace--"Not I! I should not have had half as many lessons from Gigue, and I should never have been able to write to you without the Mere Superieure spying into my letters. That's why none of the girls are allowed to have sealing wax, because all their letters are ungummed over a basin of hot water and read before going to post. Discipline, discipline! Torquemada's Inquisition was nothing to it! Of course I had to tell the Mere Superieure that you had sent for me, and that I should be away all summer. She asked heaps of questions, but she got nothing out of me, so of course she wrote to your aunt. But that doesn't matter, does it?"