Vow of Chastity Read Online Free Page A

trousers beneath your skirt when you ride to and from school,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘More comfortable and less likely to give rise to scandal. I shall tell Sister Margaret to purchase two pairs in your size.’
    ‘Thank you, Reverend Mother.’ Sister Joan had smiled her gratitude.
    ‘I used to ride myself when I was a girl,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘A most enjoyable exercise but only when suitably clad. Good morning, Sister.’
    ‘Good morning, Reverend Mother.’
    Sister Joan had watched the small, hunched figure turn and walk back towards the kitchen quarters. Generosity of spirit manifested itself in strange guises.
    Now, mistress of her own domain, she sat at the large desk in the single classroom that comprised the local school and let her eyes rove over her pupils. There were only ten who came now to the school on the moor, and at eleven or twelve years old they would move on into the State school at Bodmin, catching the bus every morning, returning at teatime. At least the farmers’ children would do that; the Romanies, she suspected, would find excuses to stay away.
    The farming children – represented by three boys and two girls sat in one block, in an instinctive drawing away from the gypsies that Sister Joan deplored but hadn’t yet succeeded in combatting. Madelyn and David Penglow sat together, faces scrubbed clean, fair hair and blue eyes making them look like twins drawn in a child’s storybook. The polite manners and pleasant smiles couldn’t really compensate for the fact that the Penglows were dreadful little prigs, Sister Joan thought. She had a softer spot for Billy Wesley who was as mischievous as a cartload of monkeys but had twice the Penglows’ intelligence. Next to him Timothy Holt was already fidgeting, his eyes wandering to the clock on the wall. Tim considered any lessons that didn’t have a direct connection with agriculture to be a waste of time. The odd one out in the ‘farming’ group, as Sister Joan thought of them, was the newcomer, Samantha Olive. She had been scarcely a month in the school and still sat slightly apart, shifting her desk slightly before she sat down in the morning as if to emphasize her isolation. A plain child, though not so plain that her face became interesting, only the cat-green eyes alive as they watched from a curtain of thick, pale lashes. Sister Joan realized there was something unnerving about that unwavering, eleven-year-old scrutiny.
    The Romanies sat across the aisle, though ‘sat’ was a relative word, since they preferred to slide down on to the floor or squirm their legs around their chairs as if they were poised for instant flight. For a wonder the five of them were present, even thirteen-year-old Conrad sitting upright with shining morning face. His sister, Hagar, jet pigtails touching the desk before her, sat next to him. Hagar ought to start going to the Bodmin school, Sister Joan thought. She was twelve and looked older, her breasts already well developed, a certain knowing look in her eyes that deepened when they were turned on any of the boys. Hagar, however, was devoted to her brother and certainly wouldn’t attend regularly at any establishment where he refused to go.
    The Lees, cousins and rivals of the Smiths, completed her small quota of pupils. Petroc sprawled at his desk, already yawning – the result, probably, of a night’s illicit rabbit snaring; Edith and Tabitha huddled side by side, looking like two of the rabbits that Petroc regularly hunted. At six and seven they were still greatly in awe of anything to do with education – a happy state of affairs that Sister Joan knew from experience wouldn’t last long.
    She drew the homework books towards her and gave what she hoped was an encouraging smile.
    ‘I asked you to write about your favourite flowers,’ she began, ‘and the work that was handed in pleased me on the whole. Petroc, you’ll have to copy yours out again, I’m afraid, because you got the inkwell