work of sweeping and bedmaking, and she knew by a sort of
divination that here was a real heroine, a sufferer or a doer of
something.

Mrs. Thorne pronounced the new maid good, but "awfully solemn." But
when Maggie Byrne met the eyes of Sylvia looking curiously and kindly
at her sad face, there broke through her seriousness a smile so bright
and sunny that Sylvia was sure she had been mistaken, and that there
had been no disappointment in the girl's life.

Maggie shocked Mrs. Thorne by buying a shrine from an image vender and
hanging it against the wall in the kitchen. The mistress of the house,
being very scrupulous of other people's superstitions, and being one of
the stanchest of Protestants, doubted whether she ought to allow an
idolatrous image to remain on the wall. She had read the Old Testament
a good deal, and she meditated whether she ought not, like Jehu, the
son of Nimshi, to break the image in pieces. But Mr. Thorne, when the
matter was referred to him, said that a faithful Catholic ought to do
better than an unfaithful one, and that so long as Margaret did not
steal the jewelry she oughtn't to be disturbed at her prayers, which it
was known she was accustomed to say every night, with her head bowed on
the ironing table, before the image of Mary and her son.

"How can the Catholics pray to images and say the second commandment,
I'd like to know?" said Mrs. Thorne, one morning, with some asperity.

"By a process like that by which we Protestants read the Sermon on the
Mount, and then go on reviling our enemies and laying up treasures on
earth," said her husband.

"My dear, you never will listen to reason; you know that the Sermon on
the Mount is not to be taken literally."

"And how about the second commandment?"

"You'd defend the scribes and Pharisees, I do believe, just for the
sake of an argument."

"Oh, no! there are plenty of them alive yet; let them defend
themselves, if they want to," said the ungallant husband, with a wicked
twinkle in his eye.

As for Sylvia, she was all the more convinced, as time went on, that
the girl "had had a disappointment." On the evenings when the cook was
out Sylvia would find her way into the kitchen for a talk with Maggie.
The quaint old stories of Ireland and the enthusiastic description of
Irish scenes that found their way into Margaret Byrne's talk delighted
Sylvia's fancy. But the conversations always ended by some allusion to
the ship and the hat, and to