The Yorkes had never given up, though they had often interrupted, the habit of family devotion. Now it was tacitly understood that the custom should be a regular one. So Hester brought the Bible and prayer-book, and placed them before her father, and her sisters folded their hands to listen.
"I think we should have Betsey in," Mrs. Yorke said; and Melicent went to ask her.
Betsey and Patrick were seated at opposite sides of a table drawn up before the kitchen fireplace, where a hard-wood knot burned in a spot of red gold. One of the windows was open, and through it came a noise of full brooks hurrying seaward, and a buzzing, as of many bees, that came from the saw-mills on the river. Betsey was darning stockings, and Pat reading the Pilot.
"We are to have prayers now," Melicent said, standing in the door. "Will you come in, Betsey?"
Betsey slowly rolled up the stocking, and stabbed the darning-needle into the ball of yarn. "Well, I don't care if I do," she answered moderately. "It can't do me no great harm."
Melicent gave her a look of surprise, and returned to the sitting-room, leaving the doors ajar.
"Come, Pat," said Betsey, "put away that old Catholic paper, and come in and hear the Gospel read. I don't believe you ever heard a chapter of it in your life."
"No more did St. Peter nor St. Paul," answered Patrick, without lifting his eyes from the paper. He had been reading over and over one little item of news from County Sligo, where he was born. The old priest who had baptized him was dead; and with the news of his death, and the description of his funeral, how many a scene of the past came up! He was in Ireland again, poor, but careless and happy. His father and mother, now old and lonely in that far land, were still young, and all their children were about them. The priest, a man in his prime, stood at their cottage door, with his hand on little Norah's head. They all smiled, and Norah cast her bashful eyes down. Now the priest was white-haired, and dead, and little Norah had grown to be a careworn mother of many children. The man was in no mood to hear taunts. Read the Gospel? Why, it was like reading a gospel to look back on that group; for they were true to the faith, and poor for the faith's sake, and they had lived pure lives for Christ's love, and those who had died had died in the Lord.
"But Peter and Paul wrote," answered Betsey. "And what they wrote is the law of God. You'll never be saved unless you read it."
"Many a one will be damned who does read it!" retorted Patrick wrathfully. "What's the use of reading a law-book, if you don't keep the law?"