‘Catherine!’ and with the exclamation Mrs. Hilliard looked at her cousin gravely for once, though her lively mind soon reverted to its ordinary track. ‘You frighten me, and that is treating me still worse than the Constables have treated me. My cousins, whom I owned, have eluded my grasp, and got beyond me, the one floored and the other crowned—alike disqualified for serving as food for my entertainment. But I never asked you to entertain me’—Mrs. Hilliard assailed Catherine, growing serious again—‘only to entertain yourself. And if you cannot do it in any other way, I am tempted to wish I could approve of a Protestant sisterhood for you. It might afford you a refuge when the world makes you so tired that you seem in danger of falling down under the load. I can lift it off myself with my little finger, but I cannot with my two hands, and all my might, remove the burden from you, poor child.’ The clear ring of Mrs. Hilliard’s voice had softened, and there was moisture in the eyes usually so dry in their sparkle. ‘Never mind me, Louisa,’ said Catherine, roused to faint surprise and reluctance to cause trouble. ‘I am only too well off, you know. I am sickening—that is, if I am sickening—“of a vague disease;” I ought to have to work for my bread—supposing bread is worth working for—yet starvation must really be an unpleasant process to stimulate so many people to frantic exertions in order to avert the catastrophe. Protestant sisterhoods would not suit me, nor would Catholic nunneries, though I think, of the two, I should prefer the last, as possessing a respectable antiquity and consistency. But to enter either would be a sham in me, since I really believe that the Son of God could help me staying with you, as well as with any lady superior or abbess—that we are as near heaven living in the world in which He lived, as when we try in vain to get out of it. It would only be a change of yoke, and my shoulders seem to be slimmer than other women’s,’ remarked Catherine with a forlorn smile. ‘Besides, no sisterhood would receive a menagerie with me—and whatever else I might be brought to resign, I do not see how I could get on without a large small family of beasts and birds.’ ‘Thank you for the implied compliment,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, recovering herself with a laugh. ‘Catherine, you administer tonics, though you won’t swallow them.’ When the time came for Mrs. Hilliard to offer the usual congratulations, her hearty admiration of Fan’s prowess so influenced the lady, that she presented the tribute cordially, and was entitled to complain that Fan had no reason to receive it superciliously.