I often put her to bed after supper and prayers, when she would love to engage me in little drony dialectics on faith. We had amicable contests of wit, God save me! on the qualities which endeared our favourite saints to us. I observed that the male beatitudes were her choice. Her room was hung with as many “Fathers” as a fribble’s is with Madonnas of the opera-house. The ways of piety are strange. I was no _dévote_, alas! like madam, yet I should have been abashed to go to bed in such company. But, indeed, there was no disputing with her principles. Faith was her covering argument in everything. She wore it like a garment, high-necked and impenetrable; only, to my taste, it was none the more becoming for being fitted over broken stay-bones. Then, too, she moved so stately by faith, that I had often speculated why her heels should be trodden over, until I discovered that she had bandy legs. Truly faith, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. I attribute it to her that mine came so soon to be in myself. I have never had reason to be ashamed of anything it hid; only instinct tells me to be more particular about my garters than my scapular. If the Lady Susannah Rowe had found herself being spied upon by the Elders, she would have snatched and donned the latter, and had complete faith in its shelter. That may be grace, but it is not graceful, I think. Since the first mother started the fashions, there has been every obligation on us to consult appearances; and I at least, though never more worldly than the most, have persistently declined to let Faith make an ostrich of me. She used often to send me to the convent across the valley with messages to the nuns; and I was early in discovering that I was the more welcomed by them when a little offering of fowls or hothouse grapes accompanied me. Then I could gain indulgences as many as I wanted for my peccadilloes--up to twenty at least for a couple of fat gallinas--and perhaps rather presumed upon my purgatory in consequence.