"Forsooth, Father, you do indeed distress me," said he. "If Pandora have heard any foolish talk on matters of religion, I would gladly break her from communication with any such of her acquaintance as can have been thus ill-beseen. Truly, I know not of any, and methought my sister Grena kept the maids full diligently, that they should not fall into unseemly ways. I will speak, under your good leave, with both of them, and will warn Pandora that she company not with such as seem like to have any power over her for evil." "Well said, my son!" responded the priest, with a slight twinkle in his eye. "Therein shall you do well; and in especial if you report to me the names of any that you shall suspect to have ill-affected the maiden. And now, methinks, I must be on my way home." Mr Roberts devoutly thanked all the saints when he heard it. The priest took up his hat, brushed a stray thread from its edge, and said, as he laid his hand upon his silver-headed stick--said it as though the idea had just occurred to him-- "You spake of Mistress Holland. She, of course, is true to holy Church beyond all doubts?" Mr Roberts went back to his previous condition of a frightened mouse. "In good sooth, Father, I make no question thereof, nor never so did. She conformeth in all respects, no doth she?" The cat smiled to itself at the poor mouse's writhings under its playful pats. "She conformeth--ay: but I scarce need warn you, my son, that there be many who conform outwardly, where the heart is not accordant with the actions. I trust, in very deed, that it were an unjust matter so to speak of Mistress Holland." Saying which, the cat withdrew its paw, and suffered the mouse to escape to its hole until another little excitement should be agreeable to it. In other words, the priest said good-bye, and left Mr Roberts in a state of mingled relief for the moment and apprehension for the future. For a few minutes that unhappy gentleman sat lost in meditation. Then rising with a muttered exclamation, wherein "meddlesome praters" were the only words distinguishable, he went to the foot of the stairs, and called up them, "Pandora!" "There, now! You'll hear of something!" said Gertrude to her sister, as she stood trying on a new apron before the glass. "You'd best go down. When Father's charitably-minded he says either `Pan' or `Dorrie.' `Pandora' signifies he's in a taking." "I have done nought to vex him that I know of," replied Pandora, rising from her knees before a drawer wherein she was putting some lace tidily away. "Well, get not me in hot water," responded Gertrude. "Look you, Pan, were this lace not better to run athwart toward the left hand?" "I cannot wait to look, True; I must see what Father would have." As Pandora hastened downstairs, her aunt, Mrs Collenwood, came out of her room and joined her. "I hear my brother calling you," she said. "I would fain have a word with him, so I will go withal."