Apparently, when the victorious fifteen or eleven came
into the refectory for supper, the whole school jumped upon the
tables and cheered and broke the chairs on the floor and smashed
the crockery--for a given time, until the Reverend Mother rang a
hand-bell. That is of course the Catholic tradition--saturnalia that
can end in a moment, like the crack of a whip. I don't, of course,
like the tradition, but I am bound to say that it gave Nancy--or at
any rate Nancy had--a sense of rectitude that I have never seen
surpassed. It was a thing like a knife that looked out of her eyes
and that spoke with her voice, just now and then. It positively
frightened me. I suppose that I was almost afraid to be in a world
where there could be so fine a standard. I remember when she was
about fifteen or sixteen on going back to the convent I once gave
her a couple of English sovereigns as a tip. She thanked me in a
peculiarly heartfelt way, saying that it would come in extremely
handy. I asked her why and she explained. There was a rule at the
school that the pupils were not to speak when they walked
through the garden from the chapel to the refectory. And, since this
rule appeared to be idiotic and arbitrary, she broke it on purpose
day after day.
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