This Gatehouse was to be finished as an Easter offering to the Father
Superior from devout ladies, who had been dismayed at the imagination of
his discomfort. The verandah was granted the title of the Cloister, and
the hours of recreation were now spent here instead of in the Library as
formerly, which enabled studious brethren to read in peace.
The Prior made a rule that every Sunday afternoon all the brethren
should assemble in the Cloister at tea, and spend the hour until Vespers
in jovial intercourse. He did not actually specify that the intercourse
was to be jovial, but he look care by judicious teazing to see that it
was jovial. In his anxiety to bring his farm into cultivation, Brother
George was apt to make any monastic duty give way to manual labour on
those thistle-grown fields, and it was seldom that there were more than
a couple of brethren to say the Office between Lauds and Vespers. The
others had to be content with crossing themselves when they heard the
bell for Terce or None, and even Sext was sparingly attended after the
Prior instituted the eating of the mid-day meal in the fields on fine
days. Hence the conversation in the Cloister on Sunday afternoons was
chiefly agricultural.
"Are you going to help me drill the ten-acre field tomorrow, Brother
Giles?" the Prior asked one grey Sunday afternoon in the middle of
March.
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