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'I mean keeping bread and butter in their husbands' stomachs,' the priest said. 'Of course I admire your mother.'

Mrs Satterthwaite moved a hand slightly.

'You're at any rate in league with her against me,' Sylvia said. She asked with more interest: 'Then would you have me model myself on her and do good works to escape hell fire? She wears a hair shirt in Lent.'

Mrs Satterthwaite started from her doze on the edge of her chair. She had been trusting the Father's wit to give her daughter's insolence a run for its money, and she imagined that if the priest hit hard enough he might, at least, make Sylvia think a little about some of her ways.

'Hang it, no, Sylvia,' she exclaimed more suddenly. 'I may not be much, but I'm a sportsman. I'm afraid of hellfire; horribly, I'll admit. But I don't bargain with the Almighty. I hope He'll let me through; but I'd go on trying to pick men out of the dirt--I suppose that's what you and Father Consett mean--if I were as certain of going to hell as I am of going to bed to-night. So that's that!'