“I beg your pardon, miss.  It is not for the priest’s advice I refuse joining your worship, but because God forbids it and the church.  Before the priest ever came here, I refused, during more than two years, to go to Protestant meetings or Sunday schools, which cost me many a tear and a scolding; and the priest’s advice has not made me more determined than I was before never to put my foot inside your ugly meeting house or Sunday schools.”

“If I asked you to go to the priest to pay him a quarter to pardon your sins, you naughty Irish girl, you,” said Amanda, in a passion, “how readily you would obey me, you naughty thing, you!”

“You’re welcome to your joke, miss,” answered Bridget; “but if you are in earnest, I must say that it is not true that Father Ugo, or any other priest that ever lived, charged any money for hearing confession.  Confession was ordained by Christ, our Lord; and those who do not go to confession cannot lead a pure life of virtue, nor preserve the love of God in their souls.”

“Indeed, miss!” said Amanda, with a sneer.  “I see the priest has been giving you a lesson.  As if none but Papists knew what purity or virtue was—­the low set of Irish that they are!”

“Our books of devotion say as much,” said Bridget; “and it stands to reason, for if Catholics who frequent confession have enough to do to keep themselves undefiled, how much more difficult is it for those who do not confess at all?  Besides, by confession restitution is enforced, and whatever your neighbor loses by fraud is restored.”

“Is it not strange, then, that the Irish Papist who robbed your mother of the money does not think of restoring it?  And you say he had the priest’s certificate of confession in his pocket?”

“That is not the fault of confession, miss.  May be he would make restitution yet, if God give him grace.”

“I have been listening to you, miss, this half hour,” interposed Murty, who now entered from the back kitchen where he was smoking, “and I am really shocked to find you tamper so with the virtue of this innocent girl.  You first attempt to reach her pure soul through her vanity, by praising her dress and accomplishments; and she nobly rejects the temptation.  Next you attempt to conquer her fortitude, by maligning and ridiculing the most sacred institutions of her holy religion; and here again you fail.  It is the strangest thing in the world, in my mind, that you should continually annoy that poor orphan, and stranger again, that her noble fortitude, her piety, her faith, fidelity, and other heroic virtues have not converted you, and those who have been for years witness of them, to something like admiration of them.”

“But she is so obstinate, Murt,” said the old maid.

“Yes,” said he, “and in that she is right.  Yourself had an opportunity of information on all these subjects, and, I understand, discussed them at length with the priest in person.  You ought to know better, then, than to repeat to this child a pure fable, that you dare not hint in the presence of the priest; namely, that he levies a tax of two shillings or half a dollar on every penitent whose confession he hears.”