’I don’t think Thyrza’s as much a favourite with any one as her sister,’ said Ackroyd, looking at Mary Bower, who had been silent all this time.

‘Oh, I like her very much,’ was the reply.  ’But there’s something—­ I don’t think she’s as easy to understand as Lydia.  Still, I shouldn’t wonder if she pleases some people more.’

Mary dropped her eyes as she spoke, and smiled gently.  Ackroyd tapped with his foot.

‘That’s Totty Nancarrow,’ said Mrs. Bower, reappearing from the shop.  ’What a girl that is, to be sure!  She’s for all the world like a lad put into petticoats.  I should think there’s a-goin’ to be a feast over in Newport Street.  A tin o’ sardines, four bottles o’ ginger-beer, two pound o’ seed cake, an’ two pots o’ raspberry!  Eh, she’s a queer ’un!  I can’t think where she gets her money from either.’

‘It’s a pity to see Thyrza going about with her so much,’ said Mary, gravely.

‘Why, I can’t say as I know any real harm of her,’ said her mother, ‘unless it is as she’s a Catholic.’

‘Totty Nancarrow a Catholic!’ exclaimed Ackroyd.  ’Why, I never knew that.’

‘Her mother was Irish, you see, an’ I don’t suppose as her father thought much about religion.  I dessay there’s some good people Catholics, but I can’t say as I take much to them I know.’

Mary’s face was expressing lively feeling.

’How can they be really good, mother, when their religion lets them do wrong, if only they’ll go and confess it to the priest?  I wouldn’t trust anybody as was a Catholic.  I don’t think the religion ought to be allowed.’

Here was evidently a subject which had power to draw Mary from her wonted reticence.  Her quiet eyes gleamed all at once with indignation.

Ackroyd laughed with good-natured ridicule.

‘Nay,’ he said, ’the time’s gone by for that kind of thing, Miss Bower.  You wouldn’t have us begin religious persecution again?’

‘I don’t want to persecute anybody,’ the girl answered; ’but I wouldn’t let them be misled by a bad and false religion.’

On any other subject Mary would have expressed her opinion with diffidence; not on this.

‘I don’t want to be rude, Miss Mary,’ Luke rejoined, ’but what right have you to say that their religion’s any worse or falser than your own?’

‘Everybody knows that it is—­that cares about religion at all,’ Mary replied with coldness and, in the last words, a significant severity.

‘It’s the faith, Mary, my dear,’ interposed Mr. Boddy, ’the faith’s the great thing.  I don’t suppose as form matters so much.’

The girl gave the old man a brief, offended glance, and drew into herself.

‘Well,’ said Mrs. Bower, ‘that’s one way o’ lookin’ at it but I can’t see neither as there’s much good in believin’ what isn’t true.’

‘That’s to the point, Mrs. Bower,’ said Ackroyd with a smile.