themselves, shaking their heads at Amy.

Fiona had been silently listening to this story all along. Only then did she suddenly make a comment, "Is that so? I just feel sorry for her."

"Fiona, you are really bold!" the other girls exclaimed in disbelief.

The secluded fence stirs the imagination, tempting the girls of the convent with whimsical ideas.

After lights out in the dormitory, the eldest girl, Daisy, would retrieve a carefully hidden sketchbook from under her mattress, attracting the little heads of her fellow boarders to gather in excitement.

This sketchbook was a gift from Daisy''s cousin, a captain in the royal guard. It was said that this cousin was of exceptionally handsome look, and Daisy would often speak of him with a mixture of pride and shyness. The book had a satin cover that evoked languid reminiscence; its inner pages were filled with verses of romance and beauty, with dashing signatures of men at the bottom. It had to be opened clandestinely, careful not to be caught by the Mothers, and thus aroused the most fascinating fantasies among the schoolgirls.

On one page, several innocent and vibrant noble girls were depicted, burying compact boxes in the soil beneath a tree. In the blank spaces, as customary, elegant cursive handwriting adorned the page, weaving sentimental verses that described this unique game: to bury a few significant objects in the depths of the earth, inscribe a message capturing the present moment, and unearth them after ten or twenty years, thus allowing memories to transcend through the