"And yet there are many convents where none, but the daughters of noble families are admitted," said Amabel. "It was so in our house in former times. Don't you know how, when it was reformed under the Mother Angelique, a house of the same order was founded at Toulon for the daughters of bourgeois? But I don't believe Mr. Wesley wishes to subvert the government, Mrs. Cropsey. Kesiah Lee says he prays for the king, and so do the preachers." "My dear, don't speak of him," said Mrs. Cropsey, nervously. "I am sure such doings as his are not proper, or they would have been found out before. Besides, my late lamented husband knew him at Oxford, and he has told me often and often that he and his brother, Charles, belonged to a knot of young men who used to do all kinds of odd things—visiting the people in the jails and almshouses, and praying with them, and receiving the sacrament every Sunday. Why, Mr. Cropsey said there was a man in prison who was hung for forgery—he wrote a man's name for the sake of getting ten pounds—and Mr. Wesley went to see him, and talked and read to him, till he actually made him believe that his sins were pardoned, and he was going straight to paradise." "Well, there was the thief on the cross!" said Amabel. "I dare say he had done worse than write a man's name for ten pounds, and the Lord promised Paradise to him." But Mrs. Cropsey evidently thought that an entirely different matter. She was made so evidently uneasy with our questions, that we ceased to ask them, and should have gone on working out our puzzles by ourselves, I dare say, had it not been for Mr. Lilburne. This gentleman had once been in deacon's orders, but his voice failing him entirely, and having an uncommon genius for instrumental music, he had taken to that entirely for a living. But he was well instructed in the Scriptures in their original tongues, and was besides a man of earnest and sincere piety. He happened upon us one evening when we were in the midst of our Bible reading, and heard us discussing some matter on which he was able to help us. From that time, a Bible lesson formed part of his regular instructions to us. He was in some sort a clergyman, so Mrs. Cropsey thought he must needs be all right as to his orthodoxy. She used to sit by and listen to his instructions with a very puzzled face, but I think she did acquire some new ideas after all. However, I am running ahead of my story.