tty's hearing.

On her part, Letty had by this time grown so intimate with Mary as to
open with her the question upon which her aunt had given her so little
satisfaction; and this same Sunday afternoon, as they sat in the arbor
at the end of the long yew hedge in the old garden, it had come up
again between them; for, set thinking by Letty's bewilderment, Mary had
gone on thinking, and had at length laid hold of the matter, at least
by the end that belonged to _her_.

"I can not consent, Letty," she said, "to trouble my mind about it as
you do. I can not afford it. Society is neither my master nor my
servant, neither my father nor my sister; and so long as she does not
bar my way to the kingdom of heaven, which is the only society worth
getting into, I feel no right to complain of how she treats me. I have
no claim on her; I do not acknowledge her laws--hardly her existence,
and she has no authority over me. Why should she, how could she,
constituted as she is, receive such as me? The moment she did so, she
would cease to be what she is; and, if all be true that one hears of
her, she does me a kindness in excluding me. What can it matter to me,
Letty, whether they call me a lady or not, so long as Jesus says
_Daughter_ to me? It reminds me of what I heard my father say once to
Mr. Turnbull, when he had been protesting that none but church people
ought to be buried in the churchyards. 'I don't care a straw about it,
Mr. Turnbull,' he said. 'The Master was buried in a garden.'--'Ah, but
you see things are different now,' said Mr. Turnbull.--'I don't hang by
things, but by my Master. It is enough for the disciple that he should
be as his Master,' said my father.--'Besides, you don't think it of any
real consequence yourself, or you would never want to keep your
brothers and sisters out of such nice quiet places!'--Mr. Turnbull gave
his kind of grunt, and said no more."

After passing Mary, Mr. Wardour did not go very far before he began to
slacken his pace; a moment or two more and he suddenly wheeled round,
and began to walk back toward Thornwick. Two things had combined to
produce this change of purpose--the first, the state of his boots,
which, beginning to dry in the sun and wind as he walked, grew more and
more hideous at the end of his new gray trousers; the other, the
occurring suspicion that the girl must be Letty's new shopkeeping
friend, Miss Marston, on her way to visit her. What a sweet, simple
young woman s