neighbor.

"Like French emmy-grays, to be sure. I told Blake when he would have
them to lodge in the house, that we are a respectable family. But he is
master, and their lordships has money in their purses."

"French lordships!" exclaimed the neighbor. "Whether they calls
themselves counts or markises, what's their nobility worth? Nothing!"

"The Markis de Ferrier," retorted Mrs. Blake, nettled by a liberty taken
with her lodgers which she reserved for herself, "is a gentleman if he
is an emmy-gray, and French. Blake may be master in his own house, but
he knows landed gentry from tinkers--whether they ever comes to their
land again or not."

"Well, then," soothed her gossip, "I was only thinking of them French
that comes over, glad to teach their betters, or even to work with
their hands for a crust."

"Still," said Mrs. Blake, again giving rein to her prejudices, "I shall
be glad to see all French papists out of St. Bat's. For what does
scripture say?--'Touch not the unclean thing!' And that servant-body,
instead of looking after her little missus, galloping out of the close
on some bloody errand!"

"You ought to be thankful, Mrs. Blake, to have her out of the way,
instead of around our children, poisoning their hinfant minds! Thank God
they are playing in the church lane like little Christians, safe from
even that lad and lass yonder!"

A yell of fighting from the little Christians mingled with their hoots
at choir boys gathering for the ten o'clock service in St. Bat's. When
Mrs. Blake and her friend saw this preparation, they withdrew their
dissenting heads from the arcades in order not to countenance what might
go on below.

Minute followed minute, and the little bell struck the four quarters.
Then the great bell boomed out ten;--the bell which had given signal for
lighting the funeral piles of many a martyr, on Smithfield, directly
opposite the church. Organ music pealed; choir boys appeared from their
robing-room beside the entrance, pacing two and two as they chanted. The
celebrant stood in his place at the altar, and antiphonal music rolled
among the arches; pierced by the dagger voice of a woman in the arcades,
who called after the retreating butcher's boy to look sharp, and bring
her the joint she ordered.

Eagle sprang up and dragged the arm of the unmoving boy in the north
transept. There was a weeping tomb in the chancel which she wished to
show him,--lettered with a threat to shed tears for a