“Always.”

“Then here am I, for one, poor one.  I am longing to go to work.”

“At first your work shall be a very bright and pleasant labor, dear child.  This is the joyous week of preparation for the glad, Christmas festival.  This week we are all, young and old, engaged in the delightful recreations of charity.  Our Lord Himself, who, in His Divine benignity, blessed the marriage feast of Cana with a miracle, smiles on our recreations of charity, which with us just now consist in the preparation of Christmas gifts to gladden the hearts of our poor these Christmas times.  To-morrow, if you please, I will take you to our work-rooms, where you may choose your own task.”

“Oh, how willingly I will do that!” said Salome, earnestly.

A bell had been ringing for a few moments; and so the abbess arose and said: 

“That is the dinner-bell.  You promised to join us in the refectory, and I think it is best you should do so, my daughter.”

“I will follow your counsels in everything, holy mother,” answered Salome, sweetly, as she arose and put her hand on the offered arm of her friend.

The abbess led her protegee down a long passage and deep flights of stairs to the refectory, where, at each side of a very long table, running down the length of the room, stood about fifty nuns waiting for their mother-superior.

The abbess gave her guest a seat next to her own, then crossed herself and sat down.

The nuns all made the sign of the cross upon their breasts, and seated themselves at the table.

This was the first occasion upon which Salome sat down at the nuns’ table; but it was not the last, for from this day she regularly appeared there, and, though she was given to frequent and violent fits of weeping, her health and spirits steadily improved under the regimen of the abbess.

On Monday morning the lady-superior took Salome through all the asylums on the east side of the convent.

They went first into the aged men’s home, where, in a large, clean, well-warmed and well-lighted hall, furnished with arm-chairs, tables, and many plain and cheap conveniences, were gathered about thirty gray-haired or bald-headed patriarchs, whose ages ranged from seventy to a hundred years.  Yet not one of them was idle.  They were all engaged in plaiting chip-mats, baskets, hampers and other useful articles that could be made out of reeds or cane.  The oldest man among them, a centenarian, was employed in plaiting straw for hats.

“They look very happy and busy,” said Salome, after she had responded to their respectful nods and smiles of welcome.

“Yes, and they nearly half pay expenses by their handicrafts.  Even they, aged and infirm as they are, can half support themselves if they have only shelter, protection and guidance.”

“And there seems to be no sick among them,” said Salome.

“Ah, yes,” answered the abbess, gravely, “there are five in the infirmary connected with this home; but we will not go there now.  Let us pass on to the aged women’s home.”