Irregularly, Billie attended classes—first at a public grade school and then at St. Agnes Academy, where the nuns took pity on the unhappy child whose family did not have the money for full tuition, and offered Billie free classes in exchange for duties such as serving meals to the students and cleaningthe rooms of the boarders. Like them, Billie lived at the convent school from Monday to Friday and returned home on weekends, a routine that endured from 1916 to 1919. The unfortunate result of her teachers’ good intentions was to alienate Billie from her classmates, who treated her as did her
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