She said that she loved me truly,
but wanted not to convert me; and if I loved her equally, why should I
wish to convert her? With this I was tolerably content, not seeing so
very much difference between a creed and a credo, and believing God to
be our Father, in Latin as well as English. Moreover, my darling knew
but little of the Popish ways--whether excellent or otherwise--inasmuch
as the Doones, though they stole their houses, or at least the joiner's
work, had never been tempted enough by the devil to steal either church
or chapel.

Lorna came to our little church, when Parson Bowden reappeared after the
snow was over; and she said that all was very nice, and very like what
she had seen in the time of her Aunt Sabina, when they went far away to
the little chapel, with a shilling in their gloves. It made the tears
come into her eyes, by the force of memory, when Parson Bowden did the
things, not so gracefully nor so well, yet with pleasant imitation of
her old Priest's sacred rites.

"He is a worthy man," she said, being used to talk in the service time,
and my mother was obliged to cough: "I like him very much indeed: but I
wish he would let me put his things the right way on his shoulders."

Everybody in our parish, who could walk at all, or hire a boy and a
wheelbarrow, ay, and half the folk from Countisbury, Brendon, and even
Lynmouth, was and were to be found that Sunday, in our little church
of Oare. People who would not come anigh us, when the Doones were
threatening with carbine and with fire-brand, flocked in their very best
clothes, to see a lady Doone go to church. Now all this came of that
vile John Fry; I knew it as well as possible; his tongue was worse than
the clacker of a charity-school bell, or the ladle in the frying-pan,
when the bees are swarming.

However, Lorna was not troubled; partly because of her natural dignity
and gentleness; partly because she never dreamed that the people were
come to look at her. But when we came to the Psalms of the day, with
some vague sense of being stared at more than ought to be, she dropped
the heavy black lace fringing of the velvet hat she wore, and concealed
from the congregation all except her bright red lips, and the oval
snowdrift of her chin. I touched her hand, and she pressed mine; and we
felt that we were close together, and God saw no harm in it.

As for Parson Bowden (as worthy a man as ever lived, and one who could
shoot flying), he scarcely k