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Updated: May 2, 2025
Such an honour had never, in the history of the Community, been accorded even to the Canonesses, much less to a lay-sister. Surely Father Peter or the Prior? Had it been the Prioress herself, why then Few can remember the petrifying effect of a flash of sudden anger in the kindly eyes of Symon of Worcester. Mother Sub-Prioress will never forget it.
"Give me tenderness," she said, and an agony of supplication was in her voice; also a rain of tears softened the hard lines of her face. Our blessèd Lady smiled, and the sweet Babe looked merry. Mother Sub-Prioress passed to the window. The sun, round and blood red, as at that very moment reflected in Hugh d'Argent's shield, was just about to dip below the horizon.
She cried out, as a great discovery, that the curtains were drawn back; upon which, Mother Sub-Prioress, exclaiming, tartly, that that had been long ago observed from the garden below, pushed the stool in her anger, and sent Sister Mary Rebecca flying.
But their awe of the Lord Bishop, and their genuine anxiety for the old lay-sister, kept them silent. The Bishop stroked his chin, keeping the corners of his mouth firmly in place by means of his thumb and finger. Old Antony was delectably funny when she said these things herself; but she was delectably funnier, when her remarks were repeated by Mother Sub-Prioress.
But what fruit all this kindness brought forth we shall see in liber tertius. How the sub-prioress, Dorothea Stettin, visits Sidonia and extols her virtue Item, of Sidonia's quarrel with the dairywoman, and how she beats the sheriff himself, Eggert Sparling, with a broom-stick.
That night there were strong purging herbs in the broth of Mother Sub-Prioress. Yet she did but keep her bed for one day. Like the Poor, she is not easily made ill! . . . Well, have thy way; only peck not my fingers, Master Robin, or I will have thee flogged through the Tything at the cart-tail, as was done to a certain pieman, whose history I will now relate.
Hush! . . . "So He giveth His belovèd sleep." The Bishop had but just returned from laying to rest, in the burying-ground of the Convent, the worn-out body of the aged lay-sister. When he had signified that he intended himself to perform the last rites, Mother Sub-Prioress had ventured upon amazed expostulation.
"What peas?" asked the Bishop; and so heard the whole story of the twenty-five peas and the daily counting, and of the identifying of certain of the peas with various members of the Community. "And a large, white pea, chosen for its fine aspect, was myself," said the Prioress; "and, leaving the Sub-Prioress and Sister Mary Rebecca, Master Robin swooped down and flew off with me!
It was no longer the same convent. The original aspiration had declined; the declension had been from the late Prioress to Sister Winifred, who, knowing that her own election to Prioress was impossible, had striven to get Mother Philippa elected Prioress and herself sub-Prioress a very clever move on her part, for with Mother Philippa as Prioress the management of the school would be left to her, and the school was what interested her.
The "jaunty little layman," undismayed though the look was austere, and the voice, forbidding hopped gaily nearer, pecking eagerly. No gaping mouths now waited his return. His nestlings were grown and flown. At last he could afford to feast himself. Mother Sub-Prioress turned her back upon the coping and stared at the archway opposite. She had no wish to see the bird's enjoyment.
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