"No," answered Amabel; "and what is that little building that joins on the church?"
"Perhaps it is the cell in which Sister Marie des Anges lived so many years. Don't you remember mother assistant telling us the story?"
"Who was she?" asked Mrs. Thorpe, glad to see us a little diverted from our grief.
"She was a very holy lady who once belonged to our house a great while ago—a hundred years, I dare say," replied Amabel. "She lost her mother when she was about sixteen, and she had a great vocation. Her father, who had several younger children, would not consent to her entering a convent, thinking she ought to take care of her little brothers and sisters. So she shut herself up in a room at home, and would not eat with the family, or see any of them if she could help it, and she slept on the floor and wore sackcloth. At last her father died, and she could do as she pleased; so she built a little cell opening from the church, and caused herself to be bricked up in it with but one window, opening to the church, and there she lived—never coming out, or washing her face, or changing her clothes, till they were all worn-out."
"She must have been a pleasant neighbor!" interrupted Mrs. Thorpe. "I should have liked a seat on the other side of the church myself. In England, we think cleanliness is next to godliness. But how did this pious lady spend her time?"
"In prayer, mostly," answered Amabel; "but she used to work beautiful lace and sell it for the benefit of the house." *
* I beg pardon of the Canadians for transplanting to another time and place this paragon, who really belongs to them. Her biographer remarks that she was exercised with a perpetual aridity of spirit. No wonder!
"I should not like to be the one to wear it," responded Mrs. Thorpe, who did not seem to admire this saintly personage at all. "You have told the story very nicely, my dear. Shall I tell you a tale of one of my saints?"
"Oh! Do, if you please!" said both together, and Amabel added: "I did not know Protestants had saints."
"Oh, yes, we have them, but they are rather different. Well, this young maid, like yours, was bereft of her mother when she was seventeen, and she had four little brothers and sisters. Her father was a clergyman—you know Protestant clergy marry—and very poor.