【荆棘鸟】第二章 08

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It was lunchtime before the last of the pain died out of her hands. Meggie had passed the morning in a haze¹ of fright and bewilderment, not understanding anything that was said or done. Pushed into a double desk in the back row of the youngest children's classroom, she did not even notice who was sharing the desk until after a miserable³ lunch hour spent huddled⁴ behind Bob and Jack⁵ in a secluded⁶ corner of the playground. Only Bob's stern command persuaded her to eat Fee's gooseberry jam sandwiches. When the bell rang for afternoon classes and Meggie found a place on line, her eyes finally began to clear enough to take in what was going on around her. The disgrace of the caning⁷ rankled⁸ as sharply as ever, but she held her head high and affected⁹ not to notice the nudges and whispers of the little girls near her.

  Sister Agatha was standing² in front with her cane¹⁰; Sister Declan prowled up and down behind the lines: Sister Catherine seated herself at the piano just inside the youngest children's classroom door and began rather' play "Onward¹¹, Christian¹² Soldiers" with a heavy emphasis on two-four time. It was, properly speaking, a Protestant hymn¹³, but the war had rendered it interdenominational. The dear children marched to it just like wee soldiers, Sister Catherine thought proudly.

  Of the three nuns¹⁴, Sister Declan was a replica¹⁵ of Sister Agatha minus fifteen years of life, where Sister Catherine was still remotely human. She was only in her thirties, Irish of course, and the bloom of her ardor¹⁶ had not yet entirely¹⁷ faded; she still found joy in teaching, still saw Christ's imperishable Image in the little faces turned up to hers so adoringly. But she taught the oldest children, whom Sister Agatha deemed beaten enough to behave in spite of a young and soft supervisor¹⁸. Sister Agatha herself took the youngest children to form minds and hearts out of infantile clay, leaving those in the middle grades to Sister Declan.

  Safely hidden in the last row of desks, Meggie dared to glance sideways at the little girl sitting next to her. A gap-toothed grin met her frightened gaze, huge black eyes staring roundly out of a dark, slightly shiny face. She fascinated Meggie, used to fairness and freckles¹⁹, for even Frank with his dark eyes and hair had a fair white skin; so Meggie ended in thinking her deskmate the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. "What's your name?" the dark beauty muttered out of the side of her mouth, chewing on the end of her pencil and spitting the frayed²⁰ bits into her empty inkwell hole.

 

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