"Great heavens! child, do you seriously think that I should so much object to men's getting hold of you if I were doing the same thing myself in secret? Haven't you yet realized that I can't do things in secret?" "Don't be cross with me again. I think you are cross, yes?" Sylvia shook her head. "What I want to know is: did you ever go to church in your life, and if you did do you ever think about wanting to go again?" "I was going to church with my mother when I was four; my stepmother was never going to church, and so I was never going myself until two years ago at Christmas. There was a girl who asked me to go with her, and it was so sweet. We looked at all the dolls, and there was a cow, but some woman said, quite loudly: 'Well, if this is the sort of women we was meeting on Christmas night, I'm glad Christmas only comes once in the year.' My friend with me was very _maquillée_. Too much paint she was having, really, and she said to this woman such rude things, and a man came and was asking us to move along farther. And then outside my friend sat down on the steps and cried and cried. _Ach_, it was dreadful! She was making a scene. So I was not going more to church, because I was always remembering this and being unhappy." On the next day Sylvia took Queenie to the mission church and introduced her to the priest; afterward they often went to Mass together. It was like taking a child; Queenie asked the reason of every ceremony, and Sylvia, who had never bothered her head with ceremonies, began to wish she had never exposed herself to so many unanswerable questions. It seemed to her that she had given Queenie nothing except another shadowy land in which her vague mind would wander without direction; but the priest was more hopeful, and undertook to give her instruction so that she might be confirmed presently. When the question was gone into, there was no doubt that she had been baptized, for by some freak of memory she was able to show that she understood the reason of her being called Concetta from being born on the 8th of December. However, the revelation of her true name to the priest gave Queenie a horror of his company, and nothing would induce her to go near him again, or even to enter the church. "This was going to bring me bad luck," she told Sylvia. "That name! that name! How was you so unkind to tell him that name?" Sylvia was distressed by the thought of the fear she had roused and explained the circumstances to the priest, who, rather to her irritation, seemed inclined to resort placidly to prayer. "But I can only pray when I am in the mood to pray," she protested; and though she was aware of the weakness of such a habit of mind, she was anxious to shake the priest out of what she considered his undue resignation to her failure with Queenie.