In all this business she was supposed to take the advice of the nuns, meeting in the chapter-house, where all business was transacted.

I am afraid that sometimes Eglentyne used to think that it was much better to do things by herself, and so she would seal documents with the convent seal without telling them.

One should always distrust the head of an office or school or society who says, with a self-satisfied air, that it is much more satisfactory to do the thing herself than to depute it to the proper subordinates; it either means that she is an autocrat, or else that she cannot organize.

Madame Eglentyne was rather an autocrat, in a good-natured sort of way, and besides she hated bother.

So she did not always consult the nuns; and I fear too (after many researches into that past of hers which Chaucer forgot to mention) that she often tried to evade rendering an account of income and expenditure to them every year, as she was supposed to do.
The nuns, of course, objected to this; and the first time the bishop came on his rounds they complained about it to him.