Part 6

There were no Sisters on that high mountain. Sister Helen Vincula was the only Sister there. That seemed very strange to Bessie Bell.

One day the strangest thing of all so far happened.

One little girl called another little girl with whom she was playing, "Sister."

Bessie Bell laughed at that.

"Oh, she is not a Sister!" said Bessie Bell.

"Yes, she is; she is my sister!" said the little girl.

"No," said Bessie Bell, just as great grown people said to her when she remembered strange things, "No, there never was in the world a Sister like that!"

Then the smaller of the little girls who were playing together ran to the larger one, and caught hold of her hand, and they stood together in front of Bessie Bell--they both had long black curls, but Bessie Bell had short golden curls--and the smaller girl said: "Yes, she is my sister!"

And the larger girl said: "Yes, she is, too. She is my-own-dear-sister!"

The smaller little girl shook her black curls and said: "She is my own-dear-owny-downy-dear-sister!"

In all of her life Bessie Bell had never heard anything like that.

And all the other little girls who were playing joined in and said: "Bessie Bell doesn't know what she is talking about. Of course you are sisters. Everybody knows you are sisters!"

Bessie Bell was distressed to be told that she did not know what she was talking about--and she knew so much about Sisters.

So she began to cry, very softly.

Then she stopped crying long enough to say: "But I never saw Sisters like that before!"

Then she took up her crying again right where she left off.

Then a little boy--but he seemed a very large boy to Bessie Bell with his long-striped-stocking-legs--said to Bessie Bell: "No, Bessie Bell, they are not Sisters like Sister Helen Vincula and the Sisters that you know, but they are just what they say they are--just own dear sisters."

Then came to Bessie Bell that knowledge that we are often times slow in getting: she knew all of a sudden--that she did not know everything. She did not know all, even about Sisters.

Because, in all that she knew or remembered or wondered about, there was nothing at all about that strange thing that all the little children, but herself, knew so well about--"Own-dear-sisters."

Another strange thing came into her mind, brought into her mind partly by her ears, but mostly by her eyes: There were not in this new world on the high mountain--perhaps there were not after all so many anywhere as she had thought--there were not so many Sisters like Sister Helen Vincula (for was not Sister Helen Vincula the only Sister she had seen on the mountain?). There were not after all so many Sisters like Sister Angela; and Sister Mary Felice, who watched the little blue-checked-apron girls playing in the sand; and Sister Ignatius, who cooked the cakes with the caraway seeds in them; and Sister Theckla, who taught the little girls to Count and to Sing.

Why, the whole world, surely the up-on-the mountain-world, seemed full of Only-Just-Ladies.

Not just a Lady here and there, coming to visit with hats on, to talk a little to the Sisters, to look at the little girls with blue checked aprons on. But here they were coming and going all the time, moving about, and living in the cabins, walking everywhere with or without hats on, standing on the gray cliffs, and looking down--maybe into the heart of a worldwide violet there, off the edge of the cliff, such as Bessie Bell saw or fancied she saw.

So many Ladies.

Bessie Bell leaned against the little fluted post of the gallery to the cabin that she and Sister Helen Vincula lived in, and decided to herself that, strange as it was, yet was it true that the whole world was full of--Ladies.

There were yet stranger things for Bessie Bell to learn.

She had not for long played with those many little girls in all sorts of clothes, and with larger girls, and with boys,--some with short-striped-stocking-legs and some with long-striped-stocking-legs,--before she heard one child say: "Mama says she will take me to Sweet Fern Cave to-morrow."

Or perhaps it was another child who said: "Mama won't let me wade in the branch."

Or another child said: "Mama says I can have a party for all the little girls and boys on the mountain next Friday!"