She declared that
the sight of Grisell made her ill, and insisted that the veiled hood
which all the girls wore should be pulled forward whenever they came
near one another, and that Grisell's place should be out of her sight
in chapel or refectory.
Every one else, however, was very kind to the poor girl, Sister Avice
especially so, and Grisell soon forgot her disfigurement when she
ceased to suffer from it. She had begun to learn reading, writing,
and a little Latin, besides spinning, stitchery, and a few
housewifely arts, in the Countess of Salisbury's household, for every
lady was supposed to be educated in these arts, and great
establishments were schools for the damsels there bred up. It was
the same with convent life, and each nunnery had traditional works of
its own, either in embroidery, cookery, or medicine. Some secrets
there were not imparted beyond the professed nuns, and only to the
more trustworthy of them, so that each sisterhood might have its own
especial glory in confections, whether in portrait-worked vestments,
in illuminations, in sweetmeats, or in salves and unguents; but the
pensioners were instructed in all those common arts of bakery,
needlework, notability, and surgery which made the lady of a castle
or manor so important, and within the last century in the more
fashionable abbeys Latin of a sort, French "of the school of
Stratford le Bowe," and the like, were added.
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