"Yes, I have been there sometimes with my cousin."
"Have you been baptised?" asked the one who had no distinguishing feature.
"Oh yes!" said Mona, rather taken aback by the question.
"I notice you don't stay to the Communion," said the one with the curls.
"I was baptised in the Church of England."
"Oh!" said all three at once, in a tone that made Mona feel herself an utter fraud.
"You must have a talk with Mr Stuart," said the one with the eyeglass, recovering herself first. Every one agreed that she was the "cliverest" of the sisters.
"Yes," said the others, catching eagerly at a method of reconciling Christian charity and fidelity to principle; and, with enquiries after Miss Simpson, they left the shop.
"It would be the Miss Bonthrons," said Rachel, when she heard Mona's description of the new customers. "They are a great deal looked up to in Kirkstoun. Their father was senior deacon in the Baptist Chapel for years, and the pulpit was all draped with black when he died. He has left them very well provided for, too."
Meanwhile Matilda Cookson had found an object in life, and was happy. It was well for her that her enthusiastic devotion to Mona was weighted by the ballast of conscientious work, or her last state might have been worse than her first. As it was, she laboured hard, and when her family enquired the cause of her sudden fit of diligence, she took a pride in looking severely mysterious. Miss Maclean was a princess in disguise, and she was the sole custodian of the great secret. The constant effort to refrain from confiding it, even to her sister, was, in its way, as valuable a bit of moral discipline as was the laborious translation of the Geier-Wally.