Now, a pious cook is not considered, in these sceptical days, as a very great desideratum. A pious cook not unfrequently refuses to cook a Sunday’s dinner, and entertains a serious grenadier on Sunday evening. I have seen many a kitchen drawer in which the presence of a hymn-book, and the “Cook’s Spiritual Comforter” (price ninepence per hundred for distribution) did not exclude the company of much surreptitious cold fat and sundry legs of fowls that were not picked clean. Serious cooks occasionally wear their mistresses’ black silk stockings to go to chapel in; my aunt had a serious cook who drank; and there is a legend in our family of a peculiarly evangelical cook who could not keep her hands off other people’s pomatum. But little Zita was sincerely, unfeignedly, cheerfully, devotedly pious. She did not neglect her duties to pray: she rose up early in the morning before the cock crew, while her masters were sunk in drunken sleep, and prayed for herself and for them, then went to her daily labour with vigorous heart of grace. There are some of us who pray, as grudgingly performing a certain duty, and doing it, but no more--some of us as an example (and what an example!) to others--some through mere habit (and those are in a bad case)--some (who shall gainsay it?) in hypocrisy; but do we not all, Scribes and Pharisees, Publicans and Sinners, number among our friends, among those we know, some few good really pious souls who strike us with a sort of awe and reverent respect; who do their good deeds before we rise, or after we retire to rest; creep into heaven the back way, but are not the less received there with trumpets and crowns of glory? Such was little Saint Zita. She was, I have said, truly pious. In an age when there was as yet but one Ritual, before dissent and drums ecclesiastic existed, Zita thought it her bounden duty to abide by and keep all the fasts and festivals of the church as ordained by the bishops, priests, and deacons. For she was not book-learned, this poor little cook-maid, and had but these three watchwords for a rule of conduct--Faith, Duty, and Obedience.