“Well,” she said, “I haven’t talked like this for a long while; but I knew you would understand. My dear, I have watched you while you have been here this time.”
Mary Corbet smiled a little uneasily.
“And you have found me out?” she answered smiling.
“No, no; but I think our Saviour has found you out—or at least He is drawing very near.”
A slight discomfort made itself felt in Mary’s heart. This nun then was like all the rest, always trying to turn the whole world into monks and nuns by hints and pretended intuitions into the unseen.
“And you think I should be a nun too?” she asked, with just a shade of coolness in her tone.
“I should suppose not,” said Mistress Margaret, tranquilly. “You do not seem to have a vocation for that, but I should think that our Lord means you to serve Him where you are. Who knows what you may not accomplish?”
This was a little disconcerting to Mary Corbet; it was not at all what she had expected. She did not know what to say; and took up the leather book again and began to turn over the pages. Mistress Margaret went on serenely with her embroidery, which she had neglected during the last sentence or two; and there was silence.
“Tell me a little more about the nunnery,” said Mary in a minute or two, leaning back in her chair, with the book on her knees.
“Well, my dear, I scarcely know what to say. It is all far off now like a childhood. We talked very little; not at all until recreation; except by signs, and we used to spend a good deal of our time in embroidery. That is where I learnt this,” and she held out her work to Mary for a moment. It was an exquisite piece of needlework, representing a stag running open-mouthed through thickets of green twining branches that wrapped themselves about his horns and feet. Mary had never seen anything quite like it before.