"Well, no, I wouldn't say that. Bless you! the truest hearts on God's
earth don't trouble about religious opinions; they have got the
essential oil expressed out of them, and that's all they want."
To Caius this subject of the lady's religion appeared a matter in which
he had no need to take interest, but the other went on:
"She was brought up in a convent, you know--a country convent somewhere
on the Gaspe coast, and, from what she tells me, the nuns had the good
policy to make her happy. She tells me that where the convent gardens
abutted on the sea, she and her fellows used to be allowed to fish and
row about. You see, her mother had been a Catholic, and the father,
being an old miser, had money, so I suppose the sisters thought they
could make a nun of her; and very likely they would have done, for she
is just that sort, but the father stopped that little game by making her
marry before he died."
"I always had an idea that the people on the coast up there were all
poor and quite uneducated."
"Well, yes, for the most part they are pretty much what you would see on
these islands; but our Bishop tells me that, here and there, there are
excellent private houses, and the priests' houses and the convents are
tolerably well off. But, to tell you the truth, I think this lady's
father had some education, and his going to that part of the country may
be accounted for by what she told me once about her mother.
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