“Well, a priest taught me just as a man of the outside world would have taught a parrot or an ape. All the people who have done me any good have done it for their pleasure or their pride, and I’m naught beholden to them. But these books!--I often spell out their titles when I’m dull, and tired of laughing at men and women. Now hark you, Lora, here’s some of ’em: A Toyle for 2 legged Foxes. A Cordiall for Comfort. Burton wearing His Spur. Memorable Conceits. Jacob’s Ladder. The Review of Rome. Troubles of y^e Church of Amsterdam. A Garland of Vertuous Dames. Romances of Brittannia. “There, heard you ever the like? It ever seems to me as if these writer folk hetcheled their brains to find some title for their books that will prick curiosity to the quick and force a man to buy, that he may certify himself what ‘A Toyle for 2 Legged Foxes’ may truly mean. Is’t not so?” “Haply. I’ll get father to beg the Elder to lend him that ‘Romance of Brittannia,’ for it sounds right relishing in mine ears.” “And you love to read?” “Dearly well.” “Then you should have been a nun. They made much of me at Los Dolores, because I could, when I would, read the ‘Life of Teresa de Jesus’ to them.” “And when you would not, could you not?” asked Lora mischievously. “Indeed I couldn’t. I miscalled the words, I gabbled, I lost my place, I dropped the book, I doubled the corners and broke the parchment,--oh, they were glad enough to let me off, the poor nuns, the poor nuns!” “And did you like the convent, Gillian?” asked Lora, so wistfully that the other paused a moment as if struck with a new idea; then throwing down her turkey’s wing she crouched upon the wolfskin, and nursing a knee between her clasped hands looked up into the pale face clearly defined against the dark leather of the chair-back, as she slowly said,-- “Why, what a nun you’d make, Lora Standish! Passing strange I never thought of it before.” “Methinks ’twould be a happy life,” replied Lora, stifling a sigh. “Happy! Well, for you it may be. Your father is of the old religion, is he not?” “I do not know, for he says naught and will hear naught about it. You know he will not join the church here, although mother belongs to it, and when we all were christened he said lay baptism was better than none; but he goes to meeting as we all do, and gives as much as any man to the support of the minister. He knows best, doubtless, and mother and I do not much care to know all his mind.” “Oh, ay!” replied Gillian, who had listened attentively, and now shook her head as if discarding some plan. Then lowering her gaze from Lora’s face to the fire, now crumbling into caverns, and vistas, and toppling turrets, and fantastic feathery piles of ashes, she slowly said,--