Chapter One

Tour of the Grounds

Third Saturday in August 1951
Mount St. Gabriel's
Mountain City, North Carolina

"When you've done as much girl-watching as I have, Mother Malloy, you can see even as they're coming up through the lower grades how each class reveals itself as an organism in its own right. You're not too tired for a bit of a ramble, I hope."

"Not at all, Mother Ravenel. I've only been sitting on trains for two days."

"Good, in that case"--the headmistress, as quick of step as she was in speech, veered suddenly off the gravel walk and, snatching up her ankle-length skirts, plunged down a woodland path--"we'll take a turn around the new athletic field and then go up to the grotto and sit with the Red Nun awhile and have a little prayer to Our Lady in front of our Della Robbia."

"Who is the Red Nun?"

Without slowing her pace, the headmistress turned back to reward the new young teacher with an appreciative smile.

"You know, I often still catch myself thinking of her as a 'who.' After all these years! The shortest way to put it is, she's our mascot. If you can rightly call a six-foot-high ton of red marble a mascot. She's been unfinished since the middle of the First World War. It's quite a story, and you know what? I'm going to save it until we're at the grotto. There are so many things I want to point out to you first. Now, where was I?"

"You were saying about--organisms?"

"Oh, yes. A class is never just a collection of individual girls, though it is certainly that, too, when you're considering one girl at a time. But a class as a whole develops a group consciousness. It's an organic unit, with its own special properties. While we're having our walk, I will tell you a little about your ninth-grade girls, the upcoming freshman class. They are a challenging group, those girls. They will require control."

"As a--an organism, you mean? Or--some ones in particular?"

"Both, Mother Malloy."

In the presence of the headmistress, Mother Malloy, who was by habit cool and exact in speech, found herself stumbling and blurting. From my responses so far, she thought, this voluble, assured woman must be wondering how I am going to take charge of any class, not to mention a "challenging" one that requires "control." Mother Malloy was vexed by the clumsiness that had come over her even as she had been descending the steps of the train, taking caution with her long skirts, thanking the conductor who steadied her by the elbow, when a nun wearing aviator's sunglasses shot forward to claim her. Mother Ravenel was a vigorously handsome woman of medium height, with a high-colored face and fine white teeth. Snappy phrases, bathed in southern drawl, assailed the young nun from Boston. Her hand was clapped firmly between Mother Ravenel's immaculately gloved ones and she was mortified that she had not remembered to put on her own gloves.

There was worse to come. Mother Ravenel introduced her uniformed Negro driver and a lighter-skinned young man: "This is Jovan--we call him our Angel of Transportation--and this is his grandson Mark, who will be going off to college next year."

Mother Malloy extended her hand first to gray-haired Jovan, who took it after the merest hesitation. Though sensing she had done something outside of protocol, she had no choice but to repeat the gesture to young Mark, who, after a quick glance at his grandfather, shook her hand and bolted away to see to her trunk. While the two men loaded it into the back of the wood-paneled station wagon bearing the Mount St. Gabriel's crest (the archangel with upturned palms...

"A strong story populated by a host of memorable characters--smart, satisfying fiction, one of the author's best in years."