away with her if she tried to set foot outside the door.[3] However,
Eglentyne had a sunny disposition and liked life in the nunnery, and had
a natural aptitude for the pretty table manners which she learnt there,
as well as for talking French, and though she was not at all prim and
liked the gay clothes and pet dogs which she used to see at home in her
mother's bower, still she had no hesitation at all about taking the veil
when she was fifteen, and indeed she rather liked the fuss that was made
of her, and being called _Madame_ or _Dame_, which was the courtesy
title always given to a nun.

The years passed and Eglentyne's life jogged along peacefully enough
behind the convent walls. The great purpose for which the nunneries
existed, and which most of them fulfilled not unworthily, was the praise
of God. Eglentyne spent a great deal of her time singing and praying in
the convent church, and, as we know,

Ful wel she song the service divyne,
Entuned in hir nose ful semely.

The nuns had seven monastic offices to say every day. About 2 a.m. the
night office was said; they all got out of bed when the bell rang, and
went down in the cold and the dark to the church choir and said Matins,
followed immediately by Lauds. Then they went back to bed, just as the
dawn was breaking in the sky, and slept again for three hours, and then
got up for good at six o'clock and said Prime. After that there followed
Tierce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, spread at intervals through
the day. The last service, compline, was said at 7 p.m. in winter, and
at 8 p.m. in summer, after which the nuns were supposed to go straight
to bed in the dorter, in which connexion one Nun's Rule ordains that
'None shall push up against another wilfully, nor spit upon the stairs