“Madame is quite right, but she forgets her three worships in the Cathedral and the many who partook of her bounty in the market!”
“Three worships,” thought she with a perplexed air, “and bounties in the market!”
As if reading her mind, he explained by means of gestures that the contributions made in the church were charged to her, (probably with added interest by the time the account reached her;) also the coins given to the various mendicants in their walks.
Alas! A Quaker by parentage, educated to pay no clergy in her own Protestant land, had here been playing into the hands of the foreign devotee! She nevertheless submitted with a grace, trusting that the next edition of Ollendorff will change its sentence of:
“Has he the hammer of the good blacksmith or the waistcoat of the handsome joiner,” etc., into
“Has she the shrewdness of the saintly guide or the mask of the beggar in the market-place?” She has neither the shrewdness of the saintly guide, neither the mask of the beggar; she has a meagre purse and a “thorough lesson in Italian.”
[FEEDING GHOSTS IN CHINA.]
THE carpenter who has been making our new book-case says he wants to go to his home for a few days—some work is awaiting him there; the Chinese writer says he wishes to go—there is a message to be sent in the direction of his village, he can carry it, and, being at leisure, can spend a few days with his family; our house boy says he, also, must go—his “muddar” has been sick, is now “more better,” and he must go and see her.