"Oh, Monsieur le Curé, it is a very long time since that has happened."
"I know nothing about that; I have not time to pay attention to the exact days, but it is really a scandal."
"Monsieur le Curé, I now always remain the whole time. Pray inquire if, for the last two years, I have not come in very punctually."
"Yes; and do you no longer give bad advice as you used to do formerly?"
"I never gave any one bad advice."
"You forget that, in consequence of your interrupting the gardener's daughter in her attendance on the catechism, you caused her first communion to be deferred, and that, when you saw her crying on that account, you told her it was no great misfortune, and gave her a neck-handkerchief to console her, so that she ended by saying that it did not much matter whether she made her first communion then or not, and that a year sooner or later was all the same to her. Perhaps you do not recollect also, that when your milkwoman, Dame Joan, wanted to send her daughter to her old mother, and that Matty did not like going, you told her that her mother was very ill-natured to oppose her wishes, and that your parents let you do whatever you pleased."
"But, Monsieur le Curé, I was then a child; it is more than three years ago."
"You have now, then, become reasonable, I suppose, Caroline?"
"You know I have, Monsieur le Curé.'
"And how should I know it? Have you ever told me so?"