‘Certainly,’ he replied briskly—‘an English Catholic.’
‘Ah! many of our priests go to England. Perhaps you have met Father O’Connell. He is on a London mission.’
‘No,’ said Mr. Austin, ‘I do not happen to have met him. My church is in Yorkshire.’
The nun gazed at him in amazement.
‘Your church! Then you are——
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am a priest.’
Her eyes slowly travelled over him. They began at the gray trousers, passed to the blazer, resting a moment on the college arms, which certainly suggested the ecclesiastical, and remained fixed on his collar. After all, why should she, a humble nun, doubt his word when he said he was a priest? Perhaps he might belong to some order of which she had never heard. Eccentricities of costume might be forced on the English clergy by Protestant intolerance. She smothered her uncertainty, and took him at his word. They went together into the garden. Mr. Austin took off his hat before the tarnished Madonna, and crossed himself again. The nun’s doubts vanished.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that I should like to buy some of this tweed. Is it for sale?’
‘Oh, certainly. Sister Aloysia will sell it to you. We are so glad, so very glad, when anyone will buy what our poor workers make. It is all a help to the good cause.’
‘Now this,’ said Mr. Austin, fingering a bright-green cloth, ‘would make a nice lady’s dress. Don’t you think so?’