"I will very gladly be your guide, my child. Listen, Salome. Hitherto, you have been very charitable in giving alms. You have given liberally of your means; but you have never yet given your personal services to the poor and needy. That was not our Lord's way, whose servants we are. He gave alms, indeed, and he performed miracles to supply them, as in the case of the loaves and fishes; but most of all, better than all, He gave His personal ministrations; He taught the ignorant; He anointed the eyes of the blind; _He laid His hands on the leper_; He shrank from no personal contact with disease, however loathsome; distress, however ignominious; nor must we, His children, do so. We must give our personal services to the poor." "Tell me what to do, and how to do it, good mother, and I will gladly obey your instructions. Tell me, for I am so very ignorant." "To-morrow, the Monday before Christmas, you may go with me the rounds of our asylums and schools, and see for yourself destitute old age, destitute childhood and abandoned infancy; and you may choose your work among these poor, needy, helpless ones," said the abbess, gravely. "And are laborers wanted in that vineyard, mother?" "Always." "Then here am I, for one, poor one. I am longing to go to work." "At first your work shall be a very bright and pleasant labor, dear child. This is the joyous week of preparation for the glad, Christmas festival. This week we are all, young and old, engaged in the delightful recreations of charity. Our Lord Himself, who, in His Divine benignity, blessed the marriage feast of Cana with a miracle, smiles on our recreations of charity, which with us just now consist in the preparation of Christmas gifts to gladden the hearts of our poor these Christmas times. To-morrow, if you please, I will take you to our work-rooms, where you may choose your own task." "Oh, how willingly I will do that!" said Salome, earnestly. A bell had been ringing for a few moments; and so the abbess arose and said: "That is the dinner-bell. You promised to join us in the refectory, and I think it is best you should do so, my daughter." "I will follow your counsels in everything, holy mother," answered Salome, sweetly, as she arose and put her hand on the offered arm of her friend. The abbess led her protegee down a long passage and deep flights of stairs to the refectory, where, at each side of a very long table, running down the length of the room, stood about fifty nuns waiting for their mother-superior. The abbess gave her guest a seat next to her own, then crossed herself and sat down. The nuns all made the sign of the cross upon their breasts, and seated themselves at the table. This was the first occasion upon which Salome sat down at the nuns' table; but it was not the last, for from this day she regularly appeared there, and, though she was given to frequent and violent fits of weeping, her health and spirits steadily improved under the regimen of the abbess.