eer her ever since her return, was quite relieved.

"I believe the sixpence a day style suits you," he said. "But, I say,
isn't anything coming up? I'm as hungry as a hunter."

Their elders being away for a few days, Tom and Erica were amusing
themselves by trying to live on the rather strange diet of the man who
published his plan for living at the smallest possible cost. They were
already beginning to be rather weary of porridge, pea soup and lentils.
This evening pea soup was in the ascendant, and Erica, tired with a long
afternoon's work, felt as if she could almost as soon have eaten Thames
mud.

"Dear me," she said, "it never struck me, this is our Lenten penance!
Now, wouldn't any one looking in fancy we were poor Romanists without an
indulgence?"

"Certainly without any self-indulgence," said Tom, who never lost an
opportunity of making a bad pun.

"It would be a great indulgence to stop eating," said Erica, sighing
over the soup yet to be swallowed.

"Do you think it is more inspiriting to fast in order to save one's soul
than it is to pay the chieftain's debts? I wish I could honestly say,
like the little French girl in her confession: 'J'ai trop mang.'"

Tom dearly loved that story, he was exceeding fond of getting choice
little anecdotes from various religious newspapers, especially those
which dealt in much abuse of the Church of Rome, and he retailed them
CON AMORE. Erica listened to several, and laughed a good deal over them.

"I wonder, though, they don't see how they play into our hands by
putting in these things," she said after Tom had given her a description
of some ludicrous attack made by a ritualist on an evangelical. "I
should have thought they would have tried to agree whenever they could,
instead of which they seem almost as spiteful to each other as they are
to us."

"They'd know better if they'd more than a grain of sense between them,"
said Tom, sweepingly, "but they haven't; and as they're always playing
battledoor and shuttlecock with that, it isn't much good to either.
Of course they play into our hands. I believe the spiteful ultra-high
paper, and the spiteful ultra-low paper do more to promote atheism than
the 'Idol-Breaker' itself."

"How dreadful it must be for men like Mr. Osmond, who see all round, and
yet can't stop what they must think the mischief. Mr. Osmond has been
here this afternoon."

"Ah, now, he's a stunning fellow, if you like," said Tom. "He's not one
of t