and joy, and boxes were being carried downstairs,
and everybody was kissing everybody else and wishing each other a Happy
Christmas, and then flying away like mad things, and I alone was being
left, Alma herself, before she stepped into a carriage in which a stout
lady wearing furs was waiting to receive her, only said:
"By-by, Margaret Mary! Take care of Sister Angela."
Next day the Reverend Mother went off to her cottage at Nemi, and the
other nuns and novices to their friends in the country, and then Sister
Angela and I were alone in the big empty, echoing convent--save for two
elderly lay Sisters, who cooked and cleaned for us, and the Chaplain,
who lived by himself in a little white hut like a cell which stood at
the farthest corner of the garden.
We moved our quarters to a room in the front of the house, so as to look
out over the city, and down into the piazza which was full of traffic,
and after a while we had many cheerful hours together.
During the days before Christmas we spent our mornings in visiting the
churches and basilicas where there were little illuminated models of the
Nativity, with the Virgin and the Infant Jesus in the stable among the
straw. The afternoons we spent at home in the garden, where the
Chaplain, in his black soutane and biretta, was always sitting under the
old tree, reading his breviary.
His name was Father Giovanni and he was a tall young man with a long,
thin, pale face, and when Sister Angela first took me up to him she
said:
"This is our Margaret Mary."
Then his sad face broke into warm sunshine, and he stroked my head, and
sent me away to skip with my skipping-rope, while he and Sister Angela
sat together under the tree, and afterwards walked to and fro in the
avenue between the stone pines and the wall, until they came to his cell
in the corner, where she craned her neck at the open door as if she
would have liked to go in and make things more tidy and comfortable.
On Christmas Day we had currant cake in honour of the feast
Notka biograficzna
Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine CH, KBE (May 14, 1853August 31, 1931), usually known as Hall Caine, was a British author. He is best known as a novelist and playwright of the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras. In his time he was exceedingly popular and at the peak of his success his novels outsold those of his contemporaries. Many of his novels were also made into films. His novels were primarily romantic in nature, involving the love triangle, but they did also address some of the more serious political and social issues of the day.
Harold MacGrath (September 4, 1871 - October 30, 1932) was a bestselling American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Also known occasionally as Harold McGrath, he was born in Syracuse, New York. As a young man, he worked as a reporter and columnist on the Syracuse Herald newspaper until the late 1890s when he published his first novel, a romance titled Arms and the Woman. According to the New York Times, his next book, The Puppet Crown, was the No.7 bestselling book in the United States for all of 1901. From that point on, MacGrath never looked back, writing novels for the mass market about love, adventure, mystery, spies, and the like at an average rate of more than one a year. He would have three more of his books that were among the top ten bestselling books of the year. At the same time, he penned a number of short stories for major American magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal, and Red Book magazine. Several of MacGraths novels were seriali
Mabel Collins (9 September 1851 - 31 March 1927) was a theosophist and author of over 46 books. She was born in St Peter Port, Guernsey.