28 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH
much cleanliness and the pressure of the knifelike edges of the wimple framing the front center of her head into something too disembodied to be called a face; little hairs sprouted in tufts all over her chin, which the wimple ruthlessly squashed double. Her lips were quite invisible, compressed into a single line of concentration on the hard business of being the Bride of Christ in a colonial backwater with topsy-turvy seasons when she had taken her vows in the sweet softness of a Killarney abbey over fifty years before. Two small crimson marks were etched into the sides of her nose from the remorseless grip of her round, steel-framed spectacles, and behind them her eyes peered out suspiciously, pale-blue and bitter. "Well, Robert Cleary, why are you late?" Sister Agatha barked in her dry, once Irish voice. "I'm sorry, Sister," Bob replied woodenly, his blue-green eyes still riveted on the tip of the quivering cane as it waved back and forth. "Why are you late?" she repeated. "I'm sorry, Sister." "This is the first morning of the new school year, Robert Cleary, and I would have thought that on this morning if not on others you might have made an effort to be on time." Meggie shivered, but plucked up her courage. "Oh, please, Sister, it was my fault!" she squeaked. The pale-blue eyes deviated from Bob and seemed to go through and through Meggie's very soul as she stood there gazing up in genuine innocence, not aware she was breaking the first rule of conduct in a deadly duel which went on between teachers and pu- pils ad infinitum: never volunteer information. Bob kicked her swiftly on the leg and Meggie looked at him sideways, bewildered. "Why was it your fault?" the nun demanded in the coldest tones Meggie had ever heard. "Well, I was sick all over the table and it went right