JEAN. [Sharply] Will you please use decent language in speaking to your mistress!  Do you understand?

CHRISTINE.  Mistress!

JEAN.  Yes!

CHRISTINE.  Well, well!  Listen to him!

JEAN.  Yes, it would be better for you to listen a little more and talk a little less.  Miss Julia is your mistress, and what makes you disrespectful to her now should snake you feel the same way about yourself.

CHRISTINE.  Oh, I have always had enough respect for myself—­

JEAN.  To have none for others!

CHRISTINE. —­not to go below my own station.  You can’t say that the count’s cook has had anything to do with the groom or the swineherd.  You can’t say anything of the kind!

JEAN.  Yes, it’s your luck that you have had to do with a gentleman.

CHRISTINE.  Yes, a gentleman who sells the oats out of the count’s stable!

JEAN.  What’s that to you who get a commission on the groceries and bribes from the butcher?

CHRISTINE.  What’s that?

JEAN.  And so you can’t respect your master and mistress any longer! 
You—­you!

CHRISTINE.  Are you coming with me to church?  I think you need a good sermon on top of such a deed.

JEAN.  No, I am not going to church to-day.  You can go by yourself and confess your own deeds.

CHRISTINE.  Yes, I’ll do that, and I’ll bring back enough forgiveness to cover you also.  The Saviour suffered and died on the cross for all our sins, and if we go to him with a believing heart and a repentant mind, he’ll take all our guilt on himself.

JULIA.  Do you believe that, Christine?

CHRISTINE.  It is my living belief, as sure as I stand here, and the faith of my childhood which I have kept since I was young, Miss Julia.  And where sin abounds, grace abounds too.

JULIA.  Oh, if I had your faith!  Oh, if—–­

CHRISTINE.  Yes, but you don’t get it without the special grace of
God, and that is not bestowed on everybody—­

JULIA.  On whom is it bestowed then?

CHRISTINE.  That’s just the great secret of the work of grace, Miss Julia, and the Lord has no regard for persons, but there those that are last shall be the foremost—­

JULIA.  Yes, but that means he has regard for those that are last.

CHRISTINE. [Going right on] —­and it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to get into heaven.  That’s the way it is, Miss Julia.  Now I am going, however—–­alone—–­ and as I pass by, I’ll tell the stableman not to let out the horses if anybody should like to get away before the count comes home.  Good-bye! [Goes out.]

JEAN.  Well, ain’t she a devil!—­And all this for the sake of a finch!

JULIA. [Apathetically] Never mind the finch!—­Can you see any way out of this, any way to end it?

JEAN. [Ponders] No!

JULIA.  What would you do in my place?