"Now you are borrowing trouble, as you tell me!" said I, holding her in my arms and trying to console her. "You don't know that any one will want to separate us."
"I feel as if they would try!" said Amabel, striving to recover her composure. "But oh! Lucy, promise me that you never will leave me, if you can help it."
"Of course I will. See, I promise on this holy relic!" said I, kissing the reliquary which I still held in my hand.
Amabel promised the same, and then to divert her and myself also, I suggested that we should go down to the chapel, and see if we could assist Mother Sacristine, who was busy cleaning the silver candlesticks, and other altar furniture.
[CHAPTER V.]
THE BISHOP'S VISIT.
WE found Sister Sacristine very busy with her silver, of which there was a great deal about the altar, and very glad of our offered help. We went zealously to work, dusting and rubbing up the altar furniture, not forgetting genuflections—curtsies—I should call them now every time we passed before the high altar.
The next day was some Saint's day; I forget whose at this distance of time, and Sister Sacristine, like a faithful woman that she was, was just as anxious to have everything in order as if we were expecting the presence of all the nobles in the country, instead of only a few poor peasants in the Church, and our little band of Mothers and sisters in the choir.
"There will not be many people here!" said the poor lady with a sigh as she settled her chairs. "Ah! Children, many a time have I seen this great church filled from end to end with ladies and gentlemen-I remember when poor Sister Augustine was professed, her father and mother came with a cavalcade, which almost filled the Church of itself; and they offered that pair of silver gilt vases on the Shrine of St. Anne. But times have changed since then, we shall have no one to-morrow."