, for a neighbouring
_traiteur_; or they could weed in a garden. The next in age could learn
knitting and plain work, reading, writing, and arithmetic. As the girls
should grow up, they were to be made useful in the care of the house.
Sister Frances said she could teach them to wash and iron, and that she
would make them as skilful in cookery as she was herself. This last was
doubtless a rash promise; for in most of the mysteries of the culinary
art, especially in the medical branches of it, in making savoury messes
palatable to the sick, few could hope to equal the neat-handed Sister
Frances. She had a variety of other accomplishments; but her humility
and good sense forbade her upon the present occasion to mention these.
She said nothing of embroidery, or of painting, or of cutting out paper,
or of carving in ivory, though in all these she excelled: her cuttings-
out in paper were exquisite as the finest lace; her embroidered
housewives, and her painted boxes, and her fan-mounts, and her curiously-
wrought ivory toys, had obtained for her the highest reputation in the
convent amongst the best judges in the world. Those only who have
philosophically studied and thoroughly understand the nature of fame and
vanity can justly appreciate the self-denial or magnanimity of Sister
Frances, in forbearing to enumerate or boast of these things.
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