"I wonder whether she wears the ear-rings?" remarked the elder Miss Sleek pertly. "Perhaps they were the attraction to Alonzo P. Jones," suggested her sister, as she triumphantly folded and smoothed her second completed towel. "It's always the way with them," sighed Miss Grains, who suffered from a complication of romantic tendency and very tight stays. "It's the money that attracts them, and possibly Mrs. Rees might have been Mrs. Rees to the end of the chapter, if it hadn't been for the ear-rings and the sale of her old clothes for countless flocks and herds." "Doubtless Miss Grains speaks from painful experience, my dears," retorted Mrs. Dodd, with a severe look at her victim; "but you may be quite certain that the acquisition of the ear-rings and the sale of the clothes were but the blessed means to an end, a mere spoiling of the Egyptians, that _the work_ might progress." "In fact, a robbing of Peter to pay Paul," suggested Lucy Warrender, but without raising her eyes from her work. The needle of the archdruidress broke, as she shook her head viciously at the scoffer. "Ah, my dear, you shouldn't laugh at sacred things," said the elder lady. "But I don't look upon Mrs. Rees as a sacred thing," cried Lucy, not to be intimidated. "A person no one would wish to know," chimed in Miss Sleek. "Ah, but think how she loved the blacks, and gave herself up to them," cooed the vicaress, in a tone intended at the same time to convey instruction and reproof. "Nasty thing," retorted Lucy, with biting sarcasm. "I suppose it was because she loved the blacks and gave herself up to them, that she married the energetic negro ranter with the dreadful name." This proved too much for Mrs. Dodd. "I am surprised and ashamed, Lucy Warrender, at your attempt to depreciate the noble self-immolation of dear Mrs. Jones. Of course it is a great privilege to be married to a clergyman, a very precious privilege, but when he is a negro and a Baptist--hum--I suppose I must say clergyman, then a woman's life must be indeed a martyrdom." "I suppose he beats her?" asked one of the draper's daughters of the experienced Mrs. Wurzel. "I sincerely trust he does," broke in the irreverent Lucy.