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'I'm glad,' the priest said, 'that ye remember enough of yer schooldays to use the old term.'

Sylvia wavered backwards to her sofa and sank down again.

'There you are,' she said, 'you can't really get away from preachments. Me for the pyore young girl is always at the back of it.'

'It isn't,' the Father said. 'I'm not one to cry for the moon.'

'You don't want me to be a pure young girl,' Sylvia asked with lazy incredulity.

'I do not!' the Father said, 'but I'd wish that at times ye'd remember you once were.'

'I don't believe I ever was,' Sylvia said, if the nuns had known I'd have been expelled from the Holy Child.'

'You would not,' the Father said. 'Do stop your boasting. The nuns have too much sense...Anyhow, it isn't a pure young girl I'd have you or behaving like a Protestant deaconess for the craven fear of hell. I'd have ye be a physically healthy, decently honest-with-yourself young devil of a married woman. It's them that are the plague and the salvation of the world.'

'You admire mother?' Mrs. Tietjens asked suddenly. She added in parenthesis: 'You see you can't get away from salvation.'