So she would stay in the convent and be taught how to sing and to read, and to talk French of the school of Stratford-atte-Bowe with the other novices.

Perhaps she was the youngest, for girls often did not enter the convent until they were old enough to decide for themselves whether they wanted to be nuns; but there were certainly some other quite tiny novices learning their lessons; and occasionally there would be a little girl like the one whose sad fate is recorded in a dull law-book, shut up in a nunnery by a wicked stepfather who wanted her inheritance (a nun could not inherit land, because she was supposed to be dead to the world), and told by the nuns that the devil would fly 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.