"Oh, it is very easy to see. You are quite carried away with Mistress Hall's sweet ways and flatteries, and she will make you as great a heretic as herself. You must needs stay to hear that old apostate hold forth, to-night. Oh, yes; it is easy to see which way the wind blows, Mistress Loveday. But there is no use in saying a word in this house, when even that malapert Amyas is put up to affront me, and Mistress Davis, my aunt, finds fault if I do but put a stitch awry in my mending. All I can do is to wait with what patience I can, till I can go to the convent. There I shall find peace."
"I do not believe you will find it there, unless you take it thither with you," said I. "And I can tell you more than that, Philippa. If you had answered the reverend mother, or even one of the elder sisters, as you did your aunt and Mistress Hall two or three times to-day, you would have been made to kneel and kiss the ground, if, indeed, you had not tasted the discipline of the rod. I saw Sister Blandina made to clean the wash-house floor on her hands and knees because she gave mother assistant a pert answer about some dusting she was ordered to do. How would you like that? You found fault with your meat to-day at table, and your aunt said nothing, only helped you to another bit. If you had done that as a novice, you would have had no more that day, except, perhaps, the leavings on the sisters' plates."
Philippa looked rather blank. "But I am going into a Carthusian house," said she.
I could not forbear laughing.
"Worse and worse. There you will get no meat at all, and only fish on feast days. You will have no linen to mend, because you will have none to wear, and so far from speaking back as you did to Mistress Davis, you will not be permitted to speak at all, save in answer to a question from your superiors."
"How do you know?"
"I heard all about it from one of our sisters, a very nice woman who came to our house when her own was put down. She said she never spoke during her novitiate, unless she were spoken to."
Philippa pouted and patted her foot on the floor.
"I believe you are only trying to scare me," said she.
"You may ask any one who knows," I answered. "Sister Dominica did not know what to make of our easy ways at first, and yet our discipline was not lax by any means."