A very kind, sweet-voiced, smiling nun (I wonder, do they always choose
the most agreeable and best-humored sister of the house to show it to
strangers?) came tripping down the steps and across the flags of the
little garden-court, and welcomed us with much courtesy into the neat
little old-fashioned, red-bricked, gable-ended, shining-windowed Convent
of the Angels. First she showed us a whitewashed parlor, decorated with
a grim picture or two and some crucifixes and other religious emblems,
where, upon stiff old chairs, the sisters sit and work. Three or four of
them were still there, pattering over their laces and bobbins; but the
chief part of the sisterhood were engaged in an apartment hard by, from
which issued a certain odor which I must say resembled onions: it was in
fact the kitchen of the establishment.

Every Beguine cooks her own little dinner in her own little pipkin; and
there was half a score of them, sure enough, busy over their pots and
crockery, cooking a repast which, when ready, was carried off to a
neighboring room, the refectory, where, at a ledge-table which is drawn
out from under her own particular cupboard, each nun sits down and
eats her meal in silence. More religious emblems ornamented the carved
cupboard-doors, and within, everything was as neat as neat could be:
shining pewter-ewers and glasses, snug baskets of eggs and pats of
butter, and little bowls with about a farthing's-worth of green tea in
them--for some great day of fete, doubtless. The old ladies sat round
as we examined these things, each eating soberly at her ledge and never
looking round. There was a bell ringing in the chapel hard by. "Hark!"
said our guide, "that is one of the sisters dying. Will you come up and
see the cells?"

The cells, it need not be said, are the snuggest little nests in the
world, with serge-curtained beds and snowy linen, and saints and martyrs