But Mary Antony, now oldest of
the lay-sisters, never failed to make careful count, as each veiled
figure passed, nor to impart the mournful reason for this necessity to
all new-comers. So that the nun whose turn it was to walk last in the
procession, prayed that she might not hear behind her the running feet
of Sister Agatha; while none went alone into the cloisters after dark,
lest they should hear the poor thin hands of Sister Agatha beating upon
the panels of the door.
Thus does the anguish of a tortured brain leave its imperishable
impress upon the surroundings in which the mind once suffered, though
the freed spirit may have long forgotten, in the peace of Paradise,
that slight affliction, which was but for a moment, through which it
passed to the eternal weight of glory.
Of late, the old lay-sister, Mary Antony, had grown fearful lest she
should make mistake in this solemn office of the counting. Therefore,
in the secret of her own heart, she devised a plan, which she carried
out under cover of her scapulary. Twenty-five dried peas she held
ready in her wallet; then, as each veiled figure, having mounted the
steps leading from the crypt doorway, moved slowly past her, she
dropped a pea with her right hand into her left. When all the holy
Ladies had passed, if all had returned, five-and-twenty peas lay in her
left hand, none remained in the wallet.
This secret dropping of peas became a kind of game to Mary Antony.
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