It was difficult to provide suitable employments for their early age; but even the youngest of those admitted could be taught to wind balls of cotton, thread, and silk for haberdashers; or they could shell peas and beans, &c., for a neighbouring _traiteur_; or they could weed in a garden.

The next in age could learn knitting and plain work, reading, writing, and arithmetic.

As the girls should grow up, they were to be made useful in the care of the house.
Sister Frances said she could teach them to wash and iron, and that she would make them as skilful in cookery as she was herself.

This last was doubtless a rash promise; for in most of the mysteries of the culinary art, especially in the medical branches of it, in making savoury messes palatable to the sick, few could hope to equal the neat-handed Sister Frances.

She had a variety of other accomplishments; but her humility and good sense forbade her upon the present occasion to mention these.
She said nothing of embroidery, or of painting, or of cutting out paper, or of carving in ivory, though in all these she excelled: her cuttings- out in paper were exquisite as the finest lace; her embroidered housewives, and her painted boxes, and her fan-mounts, and her curiously- wrought ivory toys, had obtained for her the highest reputation in the convent amongst the best judges in the world.