"Have patience with me, Reverend Mother, and I will tell you all." The Prioress gently stroked the worn hands lying outside the coverlet.
Mary Antony looked very old in bed.

Were it not for the bright twinkling eyes, she looked too old ever again to stand upon her feet.

Yet how she still bustled upon those same old feet! How diligently she performed her own duties, and shewed to the other lay-sisters how they should have performed theirs! Forty years ago, she had chosen her nook in the Convent burying-ground.
She was even then, among the older members of the Community; yet most of those who saw her choose it, now lay in their own.
"She will outlive us all," said Mother Sub-Prioress one day, sourly; angered by some trick of Mary Antony's.
"She is like an ancient parrot," cried Sister Mary Rebecca, anxious to agree with Mother Sub-Prioress.
Which when Mary Antony heard, she chuckled, and snapped her fingers.
"Please God, I shall live long enough," she said, "to thrust Mother Sub-Prioress into a sackcloth shroud; also, to crack nuts upon the sepulchre of Sister Mary Rebecca." But none of these remarks reached the Prioress.

She loved the old lay-sister, knowing the aged body held a faithful and zealous heart, and a mind which, in its quaint simplicity, oft seemed to the Prioress like the mind of a little child--and of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.
"There is no need for patience, dear Antony," said the Prioress.

"I can sit in stillness beside thee, until thy tale be fully told.