The young girl who assisted her in these often arduous tasks, and who hoped some time to take her place when sister Ursula had exchanged her seat in the entrance-gate for a more quiet resting-place in the crypt of the convent church, was the eldest daughter of dame Joan Redwood, a buxom lass of twenty summers, who had inherited much of her mother’s good nature, but very little of her good sense. She was not a little superstitious, and very vain. Although the dress she wore was not entirely conventual, it gave no opportunity for displaying trinkets or bright colors; yet she loved nothing better than to gather a little store of bright kerchiefs and ribbons, in which she arrayed herself when quite alone, and marched up and down her little cell with the greatest complacency, though she never dared carry it any farther. This had not escaped Kate’s quick eyes, and she laid her plot accordingly. She surprised her one day when making her finest toilet, and having first frightened her with the idea that she would immediately report it to the abbess, she soothed her by the gift of a necklace of red beads, and made her her devoted follower from that moment. The next day being a market day, the first face that presented itself at the wicket of the convent-gate was dame Redwood herself. She was standing beside a sturdy little pony, half hidden by two enormous panniers. Her daughter’s face was covered with blushes, caused partly by pleasure, and partly by the fear of a certain good-natured sort of scolding, which the dame thought it her duty to bestow whenever she had not seen any of her children for a time. She therefore put on her most demure look, and smoothed every fold in her apron before she descended from her post of observation to open the gate. "A laggard as usual!" said the dame, shaking the snow from her wooden shoes, and running her quick little eyes all over her daughter’s person to find the next best point of attack; and before they had gone far they encountered Lady Katharine’s present, which the vain girl had put on under her kerchief, but had not sufficiently concealed. She pounced upon it, greatly to poor Phoebe’s confusion. "Ye idle spendthrift!" she said, "ye have been spending the half-noble your father gave ye for your new kirtle on these follies, have ye? Then ye shall go barebacked for all he shall ever give ye again!" "Nay, mother, do not be angry; the half-noble is safe in the green purse. These are a gift from a noble lady, oh! so beautiful! and she is shut up here because she is a heretic. I don’t know what that is, but she seems to me as good as the mother herself."