"To tell you the truth, I never ask myself whether I like it or not," I answered her. "What is the use? I had no choice in the matter myself. Here I am, and I must needs make the best of it. There would be little profit in my asking myself whether I really liked to be a woman instead of a man. I like being here in the garden, pulling flowers for Mother Gertrude, and I like taking care of the books, dusting them and reading a bit here and there, and I like singing in the church, and working for the poor folk, though I should like still better to teach them to work for themselves."
"I suppose, of course, it is the highest life to which one can obtain!" said Amice, thoughtfully. "And yet I suppose it must have been meant that some people should marry and bring up families."
"I suppose it must, since without some such arrangement, the race of religious must come to an end before long," said I.
"Of course!" continued Amice, in the same musing tone. "You know St. Augustine had a mother, and so did St. Frances!"
"Did you ever hear of any one who had not?" said I, laughing. "But to return your question upon yourself, Amice, how do you like the notion of being a nun?"
"Not one bit!" said Amice, with emphasis.
I never was more surprised in my life, for I had always thought that if any one ever had a vocation it was Amice Crocker.
"The life is so narrow!" she continued, with vehemence, pulling so impatiently at her rosemary that she scratched her fingers. "Just look at the most of our sisters."
"Well, what of them?" I asked. "They are very well, I am sure. Sister Catherine is rather prying and meddling, and Sister Bridget is silly, and a good many of them are rather fond of good eating, and of gossip, but they are kindly souls, after all. And where will you find better women than dear Mother Superior, or Mother Gertrude, or a pleasanter companion than Mother Mary Monica, when she is in the mood of telling her old tales?"
"That may be all so, but what does it amount to, after all?" said Amice. "Look at that same Mother Mary Monica. She has been a nun in this and the other house sixty years, and what have those sixty years brought to pass? What has she to show for them?"