fault
I have to find with you--you won't keep things in their own places! You
are always mixing them up--like that Mrs.--what's her name?--who will
mix religion and love in her novels, though everybody tells her they
have nothing to do with each other! It is so irreverent!"

"Is it irreverent to believe that God rules the world he made, and that
he is bringing things to his own mind in it?"

"You can't persuade me religion means turning things upside down."

"It means that a good deal more than people think. Did not our Lord say
that many that are first shall be last, and the last first?"

"What has that to do with this nineteenth century?"

"Perhaps that the honorable shopkeeper and the mean nobleman will one
day change places."

"Oh," thought Hesper, "that is why the lower classes take so to
religion!" But what she said was: "Oh, yes, I dare say! But everything
then will be so different that it won't signify. When we are all
angels, nobody will care who is first, and who is last. I'm sure, for
one, it won't be anything to me."

Hesper was a tolerable attendant at church--I will not say whether high
or low church, because I should be supposed to care.

"In the kingdom of heaven," answered Mary, "things will always look
what they are. My father used to say people will grow their own dresses
there, as surely as a leopard his spots. He had to do with dresses, you
know. There, not only will an honorable man look honorable, but a mean
or less honorable man must look what he is."

"There will be nobody mean there."

"Then a good many won't be there who are called honorable here."

"I have no doubt there will be a good deal of allowance made for some
people," said Hesper. "Society makes such demands!"

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE INVITATION.

When Letty received Mrs. Redmain's card, inviting her with her husband
to an evening party, it raised in her a bewildered flutter--of
pleasure, of fear, of pride, of shyness, of dismay: how dared she show
her face in such a grand assembly? She would not know a bit how to
behave herself! But it was impossible, for she had no dress fit to go
anywhere! What would Tom say if she looked a dowdy? He would be ashamed
of her, and she dared not think what might come of it!

But close upon the postman came Mary, and a long talk followed. Letty
was full of trembling delight, but Mary was not a little anxious with
herself how Tom would take it.

The first matter, however, was L