“Well,” she said, scarcely unclosing her thin lips, “I reckon she had all the sweet things she was a-hankering after when she was a girl. I reckon she had a plenty and to spare, and I expect they got to tasting pretty bitter a good spell ago. Too much sweet always leaves a bit’rish taste in the mouth. My religion is—do what’s right, and don’t wink at them that does wrong. I’ve stuck to my religion, I reckon you can’t get anybody to stand up and put their finger on anything wrong I’ve done—nor any of my fambly, either.” Mrs. Wincoop put her hand on her chest and coughed mournfully. “Let them that’s _sinned_,” went on Mrs. Willis, lifting her pale, cold eyes and setting them full on her visitor, “make allowance fer sinners, say I. Mis’ Abernathy, or Mis’ Anybody Else, can pack all the clo’s and all the sweet things they’ve got a mind to over to Patience Appleby; mebbe they’ve sinned, too—_I_ don’t know! But I do know that I ain’t, and so I don’t pack things over to her, even if she is all doubled up with the rheumatiz,” unconsciously imitating Mrs. Wincoop’s tone. “And I don’t make no allowance for her sins, either, Mis’ Wincoop.” A faint color came slowly, as if after careful consideration, to Mrs. Wincoop’s face. “There wa’n’t no call fer you a-telling that,” she said, with a great calmness. “The whole town knows you wouldn’t fergive a sin, if your fergiving it ’u’d save the sinner hisself from being lost! The whole town knows what your religion is, Mis’ Willis. You set yourself up and call yourself perfeck, and wrap yourself up in yourself—” “There come the men—sh!” said Mrs. Willis. Her face relaxed, but with evident reluctance. She began to knit industriously. But the temptation to have the last word was strong. “It ain’t my religion, either,” she said, her voice losing none of its determination because it was lowered. “I’d of fergive her if she’d a-confessed up. We all tried to get her to. I tried more ’n anybody. I told her”—in a tone of conviction—“that nobody but a brazen thing ’u’d do what she’d done and not confess up to ’t—and it never fazed her. She _wouldn’t_ confess up.”