章 15: Missing lessons

"What are you sorry about?"

"For saying your mother wasn't from here."

Kit felt she was sorry more, for hinting at a marriage that was less than satisfactory.

"Oh, don't be stupid Clio. No one cares what you say about where my mother is from, you're so boring. My mother's from Dublin and that's twenty times more interesting than being from old Limerick."

"Sure." said Clio.

The sunlight went out of the day. Kit didn't enjoy the first summer outing on the lake. She felt Clio didn't either, and there was a sense of relief when they each went home.

Rita got two weeks' holiday every July.

"I'll miss going to Sister Madeleine." she told Kit.

"Imagine missing lessons." Kit said.

"Ah, it's what you don't have, you see. Everyone wants what they don't have."

"What would you really like to do in the holidays?" Kit asked. "I suppose not to have to go home. It's not a home like this one. My mother'd hardly notice whether I was there or not, except to ask me for money."

"Well, don't go."

"What else would I do?"

"Could you stay here and not work?" Kit suggested. "I'd bring you a cup of tea in the mornings."

Rita laughed. "No, that wouldn't work. But you're right, I don't have to go home." Rita said she would discuss it with Sister Madeleine. The hermit might have an idea. The hermit had a great idea. She thought that Mother Bernard in the convent would simply love someone to come and help her spring clean the parlour for a few hours a day, maybe even give it a lick of paint.

And in renturn, Rita could stay in the school and some of the nuns would give her a hind with the lessons. Rita had a great holiday, she said, the best in her life.

"You mean it was nice, staying with the nuns?"