My mother saw me watching her, and as we left the chapel, she said, “That poor old woman comes here every chance she gets. Her daughter has been in there fourteen years, and she’s got so she imagines she can hear her daughter’s voice out of all the others. We came out together one day, and she told me she can’t hear any of the other voices anymore, only her daughter’s voice. It’s like as if her daughter was in there alone, she says. It’s sad to see her straining like that, to hear every word.”

“Was it her oldest daughter or the youngest?” I asked. Being the middle one, I was concerned with such things.

“I don’t know that,” my mother said.

“Do you suppose the daughter thinks about her mother out there and doesn’t think of anybody else?” I asked.

“She could hardly help thinking of her,” my mother said. “After all, she’s still her daughter. But, of course, once they’re in there, they’re in there,” she added, “and they’re not supposed to think about what they’ve left behind. It’s hard to know what goes on in their heads. Maybe they try to forget about the outside world altogether.”

“Except for our sins,” I said. “They have to pray for us.”

“That’s true,” my mother said. “They have to think about all the sins we commit.”

If this thought amused her, she gave no sign of it.

One sunny morning late in the summer, my mother called me into the kitchen, where she was packing a parcel for the Poor Clares.

“I was wondering if you would like to take Robert with you,” she said. “It’s a long walk, but you could go slow. Then you could put him in the barrel and send him around to see the nuns.”

“Put Robert in the barrel?” I cried.

Robert, my brother, was at this time about two years old.

“Certainly,” my mother said. “Children are allowed in the barrel until they’re three years old. After that they’re too old. You can take him if you like. I’ll put his blue suit on him.”