e sure! She's for all the world like a lad
put into petticoats. I should think there's a-goin' to be a feast over
in Newport Street. A tin o' sardines, four bottles o' ginger-beer, two
pound o' seed cake, an' two pots o' raspberry! Eh, she's a queer 'un! I
can't think where she gets her money from either.'

'It's a pity to see Thyrza going about with her so much,' said Mary,
gravely.

'Why, I can't say as I know any real harm of her,' said her mother,
'unless it is as she's a Catholic.'

'Totty Nancarrow a Catholic!' exclaimed Ackroyd. 'Why, I never knew
that.'

'Her mother was Irish, you see, an' I don't suppose as her father
thought much about religion. I dessay there's some good people
Catholics, but I can't say as I take much to them I know.'

Mary's face was expressing lively feeling.

'How can they be really good, mother, when their religion lets them do
wrong, if only they'll go and confess it to the priest? I wouldn't
trust anybody as was a Catholic. I don't think the religion ought to be
allowed.'

Here was evidently a subject which had power to draw Mary from her
wonted reticence. Her quiet eyes gleamed all at once with indignation.

Ackroyd laughed with good-natured ridicule.

'Nay,' he said, 'the time's gone by for that kind of thing, Miss Bower.
You wouldn't have us begin religious persecution again?'

'I don't want to persecute anybody,' the girl answered; 'but I wouldn't
let them be misled by a bad and false religion.'

On any other subject Mary would have expressed her opinion with
diffidence; not on this.

'I don't want to be rude, Miss Mary,' Luke rejoined, 'but what right
have you to say that their religion's any worse or falser than your
own?'

'Everybody knows that it is--that cares about religion at all,' Mary
replied with coldness and, in the last words, a significant severity.

'It's the faith, Mary, my dear,' interposed Mr. Boddy, 'the faith's the
great thing. I don't suppose as form matters so much.'

The girl gave the old man a brief, offended glance, and drew into
herself.

'Well,' said Mrs. Bower, 'that's one way o' lookin' at it but I can't
see neither as there's much good in believin' what isn't true.'

'That's to the point, Mrs. Bower,' said Ackroyd with a smile.

There was a footstep in the shop--firm, yet light and quick--then a
girl's face showed itself at the parlour door. It was a face which
atoned for lack of regular features by the bright intelligence and the