Page:Our Philadelphia (Pennell, 1914).djvu/105

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AT THE CONVENT
85

our faces on our school books at the study hour, more a burden than ever as we drooped and drowsed in the heat;—blazing summer when the fragrance of the roses hung heavy over Madame Huguet's garden and mingled with the too sweet fragrance of the honeysuckle about the columns of the porch and over every door;—blazing summer when all day long meadows and gardens and lawns swooned under the pitiless sunshine and we, who had braved the winter cold undismayed, never put as much as our noses out of doors until the hour of sunset;—blazing summer when for many years I saw the other girls going home, the gaiety of sea and mountain and change awaiting them, while my Sister and I stayed on, desolate at heart despite the efforts of the nuns to help us forget, feeling forlornly forsaken as we watched the green burnt up into brown and the summer flowers wilt and die, and the drought turn the roads to dust, and all Nature parched as we parched with it. The holiday dragged terribly and, reversing the usual order of things, I counted the days until school would begin again. However, at least I can say that I saw the Philadelphia summer in its full terrors as every Philadelphia child ever born, for whom wealth or chance opens no gate of escape, must see it and did see it of old.

And so for me in the Convent the seasons were the same as for the child in Philadelphia and its suburbs. And I learnt how cold Philadelphia can be, and how hot—if Penn, safe in England, was grateful for the greater near-