Century Magazine/Volume 96/Issue 3/Sister Eloise

Sister Eloise
BY EDITH BALLINGER PRICE
Illustrations by the author
THE gray-walled convent garden lay hushed and warm in the sunlight of noon. Its gentle silence was scarcely shaken by the thunder of the guns, which had now become, within those sun-flecked walls, as accustomed a sound as the tiny booming of the bees among the flowers. The cedar that stood at the corner of the wall, stretching out dark, adventurous boughs into the outer world, cast moving splashes of shadow on the grass. From a yellow rose beside the paved path three petals fell, hovered momentarily down the still air, and touched the worn stones like three kisses.
But the dreaming garden became suddenly a place of small laughter, of little cries and excited chattering. From the shadow of the cloister arches into the gilding sunshine came scampering hand in hand a troop of little children, very happy that it was time for the recess. They were children of the village of Nichy, four miles to the northward, and since that thundering of the guns had been so ominously steady, they had lived in the convent, studying their lessons with the sisters and playing in the high-walled garden. Somewhere their fathers fought for F

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