Ever a source of love and financial aid to Suor Maria Celeste, as well as the grateful recipient of her labors, he now began to do favors for her that required the skilled work of his own hands. And she, emboldened either by her recent assistance on the manuscript for the Dialogue or by the maturity of her nearly thirty years, engaged her father with increased confidence. Before too long, the strength of their mutual affection and deepening interdependence would submit to tests neither one of them could yet imagine.Having moved into her private room, Suor Maria Celeste found it spacious enough to accommodate a small party of sisters at afternoon needlework. The single, small, high window, however, admitted only a dim light, and so she asked Galileo if she might send him the window frames to be refitted with newly waxed linen. “I do not doubt your loving willingness in this matter,” she said of her request, “but the fact that the work is rather more suited to a carpenter than a philosopher gives me pause.”Convent clock of the type used at San MatteoShe also prevailed on him several times to repair the convent’s temperamental clock.
