Here they remained for some time, going among the villagers and soliciting that the poor would send their children to be taught. This the poor did, and gradually the children began to fill the kitchen of the mud cabin. If it rained during class umbrellas had to be put up as a protection under a nominal roof, just as the nuns had to sleep under umbrellas in wet weather. Indeed, sometimes it rained so hard that they were obliged to take up their mattresses at night, and seek a more sheltered spot elsewhere. At last the number of their charity pupils increased; and the bishop, as poor as they were almost, offered them the only asylum in his power, his own paternal home, also a mud cabin; but instead of two miserable rooms it contained four. This was an immense improvement, and the nuns felt like exchanging a cottage for a palace. But here the protection of umbrellas was still necessary, as the roof was also made of loosely set stones and beams. In time other nuns joined them from France, until they formed a community of eleven, with eighty village school children and one boarder. It grew daily more and more necessary that something should be done to raise money to build a convent. Their couches had been slowly raised from a mud floor to tables, upon which they slept the sleep of Trappists; but a proper establishment was now indispensable to the work they had laid themselves out to do. With this object, two nuns set out on a supplicating mission round the Levant. They were less successful than they had perhaps anticipated, for they returned after their arduous task only enriched by eight thousand francs. With this sum they were enabled to build a small portion of the present establishment; but building in a Greek island is slow and costly work. Each stone has to be carried up the long mountain pass from the quarries; the way is difficult, the men unaccustomed to prompt work. However, in due time the nuns were enabled to leave the bishop's homely roof, where their chapel was a tiny closet separated from the class and dining-room by a curtain, and the beds the tables used during the day with umbrellas for a roof. Two nuns later made the tour of France in search of funds, and were rewarded for their unpleasant undertaking by the sum of twenty-five thousand francs, which added something more to the building already commenced, and smaller sums, together with pupils, came afterwards. Now they have between fifty and sixty pupils who are paid for, and almost as large a number of charity children and orphans who are supported at the expense of the convent. These children are all Greeks or Levantines; but as the language of the Order is French, they speak French fluently.