t or not; and that will be as God sees best for me, so why
trouble myself about it? And as to people not liking me because I am a
Puritan, don't you remember the Lord's words, `If the world hate you, ye
know that it hated Me before it hated you'?"

"Oh, you sucked in the Bible with your mother's milk, I suppose," said
Gertrude pettishly, "and have had it knitted into you ever since by your
grandmother's needles. I did not expect you to be a spoil-sport,
Lettice. I thought you would be only too happy to come out of your
convent for a few hours."

"Thank you, I don't want to be a spoil-sport, and I do not think the
Bible is, unless the sports are bad ones, and they might as well be
spoiled, might they not?"

"There's Mr Stone!" cried Gertrude inconsequently, and in a relieved
tone, for Lettice was leading in a direction whither she had no wish to
follow. "Look! isn't he a fine young man? What a shame to have
christened so comely a man by so ugly a name as Jeremy!"

"Do you think so? It is a beautiful name; it means `him whom God hath
appointed,'--Aunt Edith says so."

"Think you I care what it _means_!" was the answer, in a rather vexed
tone, though it was accompanied by a laugh. "'Tis ugly and
old-fashioned, child. Now your cousin, Mr Louvaine, has a charming
name. But fancy having a name with a sermon wrapped up in it!"

"I do not understand!" said Lettice a little blankly. "You seem to
think little of those things whereof I have been taught to think much;
and to think much of those things whereof I have been led to think
little. It puzzles me. Excuse me."

Gertrude laughed more good-naturedly.

"My dear little innocence!" said she. "I am sorry to let the cold,
garish daylight in upon your pretty little stained-glass creed: it is
never pleasant to have scales taken from your eyes. But really, you
look on things in such false colours, that needs must. Why, my child,
if you were to go out into the world, you would find all those fancies
laughed to scorn. 'Tis only Puritans love sermons and Bibles and such
things. No doubt they are all right, and good, and all that; quite
proper for Sunday, and sick-beds, and so on. I am not an infidel, of
course. But then--well?"

Lettice's face of utter amazement arrested the flow of words on
Gertrude's lips.

"Would your mother think you loved her, Gertrude, if you told her you
never wanted to see her except on Sundays and when you were sick? And
if God