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 going up and down, but if they tread it out forthwith'![4] They had in all about eight hours' sleep, broken in the middle by the night service.
They had three meals, a light repast of bread and beer after prime in the morning, a solid dinner to the accompaniment of reading aloud in the middle of the day, and a short supper immediately after vespers at 5 or 6 p.m.
From 12 to 5 p.m.in winter and from 1 to 6 p.m.in summer Eglentyne and her sisters were supposed to devote themselves to manual or brain work, interspersed with a certain amount of sober and godly recreation.
She would spin, or embroider vestments with the crowned monogram M of the Blessed Virgin in blue and gold thread, or make little silken purses for her friends and finely sewn bands for them to bind round their arms after a bleeding.

She would read too, in her psalter or in such saints' lives as the convent possessed, written in French or English; for her Latin was weak, though she could construe _Amor vincit omnia_.