Page:Our Philadelphia (Pennell, 1914).djvu/97

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AT THE CONVENT
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based upon any other model. For the upper room in the wing, ambitiously christened by somebody Gothic Hall, had a high pointed roof that made it an ice-house in winter and, for our sins, it was used as the Dormitory of the Sacred Heart where I slept. I can recall mornings when the water was frozen in our pitchers while the big stove, in the middle of the high-pitched room, burned red hot as if to mock at us as, with numbed fingers, we struggled to make our beds and wash ourselves and button and hook on our clothes. And the builders had so contrived that summer turned our fine Gothic Dormitory into a fiery furnace. How many June nights, contrary to all the rules, have I hung out of the little, horribly Gothic window at the head of my alcove, gasping in the warm darkness that was so sweet and stifling with the fragrance of the flowers in Madame Huguet's garden just below.

I had not been long at the Convent before another brown stone wing extended to the north and two stories were added to the main building which, for the sake of harmony, was now painted brown from top to bottom. In a niche on this new facade, a statue of the Sacred Heart was set, and all semblance to the old country house as gone, except for the broad porch without and the well-proportioned rooms within. But these, and later improvements, additions and alterations cannot make me forget the Convent as it was when I first came to it, growing up about the simple, solidly-built, spacious yellow house that was once the Philadelphian's ideal of suburban comfort,