By the rule of our constitution, we were to elect a prioress every three years, but there was nothing to hinder the same person from being elected again and again, and Mother Paulina was such a Queen Log that I imagine nobody cared to get rid of her. She was an indolent, easy-going body, caring, I do think, more for her own ease and comfort than any thing else, and very little troubled as to how matters went in the house, so long as they did not come in her way. Like many such persons, however, she now and then took a fit of activity and authority, when she would go about the house interfering in every body's business whether she knew any thing about the matter in hand or not, giving contradictory orders and setting things generally at sixes and sevens. This happily accomplished, and her conscience discharged, she would relapse into her great chair and her indolence again, and leave matters to settle as they might.
One of these fits was on her just now. She had been out in the garden in the morning, scolding the gardener about the management of the winter celery and the training of the apricots, of which she knew as much as she did of Hebrew. I saw her two attendant sisters fairly laughing behind her back.
As for the gardener, he was a sober old Scotsman, who had come to this country in the train of some of the banished Scots lords, and liked it too well to leave it. He understood his business, and his mistress, too. He would stand, cap in hand, in an attitude of the deepest humility, listening to his lady's lectures and throwing in a word now and then, as—
"Na doot, madam! Ye'll hae the right o't. I would say so!"
Then he would go on his own course, precisely as if she had not spoken, and she, having said her say without contradiction, would imagine she had had her own way. (It is not a bad way to deal with unreasonable people, as I have learned by experience.)
I found the lady sitting in her great chair, beside a table on which was a crucifix of gold and ivory, a vase for holy water, and a box which I supposed to contain some holy relic. A handsome rug was before her chair, and she rested her feet on an embroidered hassock. According to the custom of the house, two sisters stood behind her. The younger sisters took this duty in rotation.
"So!" said she, when I had made my obeisance. "You are the child who was sent hither by my Lady Peckham."
This in a severe tone, as if I had been much to blame for being such a child.
"And why did not you come hither at once, instead of stopping four months in London, and putting me to all that trouble of looking over poor Sister Benedict's things, and finding my lady's letter."
To which I could only answer that I did not know. As if a little chit like myself would have any hand in her own disposal.