She did not blink, as old Mary Antony used to blink. Her small eyes
peered from out her veil as sharply in sunshine as in shadow.
Yet was there something curiously furtive about Mother Sub-Prioress,
when she entered the cloister. Listening at the doors in the cell
passage, she had been merely official, acting with a precise celerity
which bespoke long practice. Now she hesitated; looked around as if to
make sure she was not observed, and obviously held, with her left hand,
something concealed.
Moving along the cloister, she seated herself upon the stone slab in
the archway overlooking the lawn and the pieman's tree; then drew forth
from beneath her scapulary, the worn leathern wallet which had belonged
to the old lay-sister, Mary Antony.
At the same moment there came a gentle flick of wings, and the robin
alighted on the stone coping, not three feet from the elbow of Mother
Sub-Prioress.
Very bright-eyed, and tall on his legs, was Mary Antony's little vain
man. With his head on one side, he looked inquiringly at Mother
Sub-Prioress; and Mother Sub-Prioress, from out the curtain of her
veil, frowned back at him.
There was a solemn quality in the complete silence. No naughty tales
of bakers' boys or piemen. No gay chirps of expectation. Receiving
cheese from Mother Sub-Prioress, bestowed for conscience' sake, partook
of the nature of a sacred ceremony. Yet the robin had come for his
cheese, and the Sub-Prioress had come to give it to him.
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