"Hush, hush!" I said, alarmed. "Say what you like to me, but don't speak so loud. Remember what we heard this morning about eavesdropping. I do wish you would tell me what troubles you so, dear. Perhaps it would not seem so bad, if you talked it over."
She laid her head on my lap and cried as if her heart would break.
"O Rosamond, I shall never be a Saint—never!" said she, sobbing. "The more I try the worse I am."
"What now?" said I.
"You know how I have fasted and prayed, lately," she continued. "I have denied myself everything—even converse with you, Rosamond. I have striven to put down all affection for one more than another, and have associated with those I liked the least—"
"I wondered what made you so intimate with Sister Frances, and Sister Mary Paula, and so cold to me," I said. "I was afraid I had offended you."
"I know you were, and I made up my mind to bear the unjust suspicion and not justify myself in your eyes, as another means of humiliation. I have eaten only the coarsest food, and worn sackcloth next my skin, and lain all night upon the floor—and it is all—of no use—I only feel—just as cross as I can be!" Here she cried afresh, and I soothed her as well as I could. "I read in the life of St Francis how the Saint requested the bird to stop singing, and tamed the wolf," she continued, presently, "and I thought I would try to tame Sultan our peacock; but when I kindly requested him to leave his corn for the hens, he wouldn't; and when (first asking the intercession of St. Francis) I tried to induce him to give it up to me—he—he pecked me," sobbed Amice, with another burst of grief, and she showed me her hand, all raw and sort in the palm where the ugly creature had wounded her.
"Amice," said I, when she was a little calmer, "why don't you tell all these things to Father Fabian?"
"I did, last night," said she; "and he told me I was making myself ill to no purpose, and that the exercises appointed were enough for me. But St. Clare and the other Saints used a great many more austerities than these."
"I suppose their spiritual superiors allowed them," I said.