“Let what alone?” asked Roisia.
“Oh, all that parson’s talk,” returned Diana. “It is all very well for priests and nuns, but secular people have nothing to do with it.”
“I thought even secular people wanted to go to Heaven,” coolly put in Elaine, not because she cared a straw for the question, but because she delighted in taking the opposite side to Diana.
“Let them go, then!” responded Diana, rather sharply. “They can keep it to themselves, can’t they?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Elaine, laughing. “Some people cannot keep things to themselves. Just look at Olympias, whatever she is doing, how she argues the whole thing out in public. ‘Oh, shall I go or not? Yes, I think I will; no, I won’t, though; yes, but I will; oh, can’t somebody tell me what to do?’”
Elaine’s mimicry was so perfect that Olympias herself joined in the laugh. The last-named damsel carried on all her mental processes in public, instead of presenting her neighbours, as most do, with results only. And when people wear their hearts upon their sleeves, the daws will come and peck at them.
“Now, don’t tease Olympias,” said Roisia good-naturedly.
“Oh, let one have a bit of fun,” said Elaine, “when one lives in a convent of the strictest order.”
“I suspect thou wouldst find a difference if thou wert to enter one,” sneered Diana.
Elaine would most likely have fought out the question had not Mistress Underdone entered at that moment with a plate of gingerbread in her hand smoking hot from the oven.