se, Sister Mary, my head does ache so!"

"No excuses, Cicely! Answer at once."

A long sobbing sigh preceded the words--"Half a pound."

"Now get to your sewing. Cicely, I must be obeyed; and you are a right
perverse child as one might look for with the training you have had.
Let me hear no more about headache: it's nothing but nonsense."

"But my head does ache dreadfully, Sister."

"Well, it is your own fault, if it do. Two mortal hours were you crying
last night,--the stars know what for!"

"It was because I didn't hear nothing about Father," said poor Cissy
sorrowfully. "Mistress Wade promised she--"

"Mistress Wade--who is that?"

"Please, she's the hostess of the King's Head: and she said she would
let me know when--"

"When what?"

"When Father couldn't have any pain ever any more."

"Do you mean that you wish to hear your Father is dead, you wicked
child?"

Cissy looked up wearily into the nun's face. "He's in pain now," she
said; "for he is waiting, and knows he will have more. But when it has
come, he will have no more, never, but will live with God and be happy
for ever and ever. I want to know that Father's happy."

"How can these wicked heretics fall into such delusions?" said Sister
Mary, looking across the room at Sister Joan, who shook her head in a
way which seemed to say that there was no setting any bounds to the
delusions of heretics. "Foolish child, thy father is a bad man, and bad
men do not go to Heaven."

"Father's not a bad man," said Cissy, not angrily, but in a tone of calm
persuasion that nothing would shake. "I cry you mercy, Sister Mary, but
you don't know him, and somebody has told you wrong. Father's good, and
loves God; and people are not bad when they love God and do what He says
to them. You're mistaken, please, Sister."

"But thy father does not obey God, child, because he does not obey the
Church."

"Please, I don't know anything about the Church. Father obeys the
Bible, and that is God's own Word which He spoke Himself. The Church
can't be any better than that."

"The Church, for thee, is the priest, who will tell thee how to please
God and the Holy Mother, if thou wilt hearken."

"But the priest's a man, Sister: and God's Book is a great deal better
than that."

"The priest is in God's stead, and conveys His commands."

"But I've got the commands, Sister Mary, in the Book; and God hasn't
written a new one, has He?"

"Silly child! the Church