"Oh, I knew some of it before I came here. There was a chaplain in Calcutta who was--well, not exactly ill, but not well; and father took him with us on the vessel when he went for certain things, and he staid with us afterward. He used to read aloud, and it sounded so splendid! Then he taught me. But Cousin Leverett said it wasn't quite right, so I am going over it. And he is teaching me a little French." "You know they think women don't need to know much beside housekeeping and sewing. I just hate to hear about ruffles cut on the straight or bias, and I couldn't tell what Dacca muslin, or jaconet, or dimity was to save myself. And eyelet work and French knots and run lace--that's what the big girls who come to see Polly talk about. But I like books, and studies, and different countries. I'd like to travel. But I don't know that I want to be a sea captain." They found some queer old houses that were odd enough. Mr. Leverett said they were almost two hundred years old, and that at first the place kept the old Indian name, Naumkeag. But the Reverend Francis Higginson gave it a new name out of the Bible--"In Salem also is His tabernacle." The early pilgrims built a chapel at once. "How close the houses are!" It was a row that had survived the hand of improvement. There was a huge central chimney-stack, big enough for a modern factory, and the house seemed built around it. The second story overhung the first, and in some of them were small dormer windows looking like bird houses. And the little panes of greenish glass seemed to make windows all framework. Cynthia was much interested in the Roger Williams house, and the story of the old minister. "Why, I thought religion made people good and pleasant----" Then she checked herself, for often Cousin Elizabeth was _not_ pleasant. And she seemed more religious than Cousin Eunice. And Cousin Chilian rarely scolded or said a cross word--he never talked about religion, but he went to church on Sunday; they all did. She studied the Catechism, she could learn easily when she had a mind to, but she didn't understand it at all. She shocked Elizabeth by her irreverent questions. There was the old horn-book primer with-- "In Adam's fall We sinned all." "I don't see how that could be when we were not there!" she said almost defiantly. "It means the nature we inherited." "But I don't think that fair!" "You don't know, you never can understand until you are in a state of grace. Don't ask such impertinent questions. You are a little heathen child." Then she asked Cousin Chilian what "a state of grace" meant. "I think it is the willingness to do right, to be truthful, kindly, obliging. It is all comprised in the Golden Rule--to love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself, not to do anything to him that you would not like to have done to yourself, and to do to him whatever you would like him to do for you. That is enough for a little girl."