t better baked at home in a
good sweet brick oven, yet, as some folks never can get it to rise, I
don't see why a man may not be a baker. You see, my lady, I look upon
baking as a simple trade, and as such lawful. There is no machine comes
in to take away a man's or woman's power of earning their living, like
the spinning-jenny (the old busybody that she is), to knock up all our
good old women's livelihood, and send them to their graves before their
time. There's an invention of the enemy, if you will!"

"That's very true!" said my lady, shaking her head.

"But baking bread is wholesome, straight-forward elbow-work. They have
not got to inventing any contrivance for that yet, thank Heaven! It does
not seem to me natural, nor according to Scripture, that iron and steel
(whose brows can't sweat) should be made to do man's work. And so I say,
all those trades where iron and steel do the work ordained to man at the
Fall, are unlawful, and I never stand up for them. But say this baker
Brooke did knead his bread, and make it rise, and then that people, who
had, perhaps, no good ovens, came to him, and bought his good light
bread, and in this manner he turned an honest penny and got rich; why,
all I say, my lady, is this,--I dare say he would have been born a
Hanbury, or a lord if he could; and if he was not, it is no fault of his,
that I can see, that he made good bread (being a baker by trade), and got
money, and bought his land. It was his misfortune, not his fault, that
he was not a person of quality by birth."

"That's very true," said my lady, after a moment's pause for
consideration. "But, although he was a baker, he might have been a
Churchman. Even your eloquence, Miss Galindo, shan't convince me that
that is not his own fault."

"I don't see even that, begging your pardon, my lady," said Miss Galindo,
emboldened by the first success of her eloquence. "When a Baptist is a
baby, if I understand their creed aright, he is not baptized; and,
consequently, he can have no godfathers and godmothers to do anything for
him in his baptism; you agree to that, my lady?"

My lady would rather have known what her acquiescence would lead to,
before acknowledging that she could not dissent from this first
proposition; still she gave her tacit agreement by bowing her head.

"And, you know, our godfathers and godmothers are expected to promise and
vow three things in our name, when we are little babies, and can do
noth