"Gokigenyou," said three Saint Lillian's seniors in a group, to the girl approaching the statue of the Virgin Mary.

"Go-Gokigenyou," said the shy girl, not really looking up at them before waiting to pray.

Because it had just rained, the fall morning sky was particularly serene and alive behind Maria-sama.

It was year 23 of the Showa era at St. Lillian's Private School for Girls

Founded in Meiji 34, Shiritsu SanRirian Jogakuen was originally a one-room school for the children of Sanmauru Minashigoin. Sanmauru was an orphanage founded in Meiji year seven by Les Dames de Saint-Maur on 500 tsubo of land in the Tokyo foreign concession, in an area named Musashino after the war. At that time the orphanage fed, cared for and taught 70 orphan girls.

After nearly 30 years of dependence on contributions from benevolent sister organizations in France and Canada, The orphanage school became Saint-Lilian's Girls' Academy, and enrolled the young women of nobility, who studied beside the orphan girls, who of course, did not have to pay anything. It was partly surrounded by Musashi Field, an arboretum which was turned from flowers and ivies to vegetables during the war. The gardens and the orphanage greenhouse cultivate discipline in the girls, and a green thumb.

Regardless of their background, girls at St. Lillian's are held to the same strict standards. Inside, the whole school is as quiet as the library. Outside, shouting and horseplay are not allowed past the first couple of years of shougakkou. Girls are not to leave its care without becoming "nadeshiko, ojou, keiken*"

With the coming of the war, girls who were fatherless but whose family had some ability to pay something, and were of good character, have been allowed to enter St. Lillian's.

Ikegami Yumiko is one such girl.

* A 'Yamato nadeshiko' and an ojou-sama/lady, and devout.