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.’

‘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 hell fire; 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!’

‘ “And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!” ’ Sylvia jeered softly. ‘All the same I bet you wouldn’t bother to reclaim men if you could not find the young, good-looking, interestingly vicious sort.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said. ‘If they didn’t interest me, why should I?’

Sylvia looked at Father Consett.

‘If you’re going to trounce me any more,’ she said, ‘get a move on. It’s late, I’ve been travelling for thirty-six hours.’

‘I will,’ Father Consett said. ‘It’s a good maxim that if you swat flies enough some of them stick to the wall. I’m only trying to make a little mark on your common sense. Don’t you see what you’re going to?’

‘What?’ Sylvia said indifferently. ‘Hell?’

‘No,’ the Father said, ‘I’m talking of this life. Your confessor must talk to you about the next. But I’ll not tell you what you’re going to. I’ve changed my mind. I’ll tell your mother after you’re gone.’

‘Tell me,’ Sylvia said.

‘I’ll not,’ Father Consett answered. ‘Go to the fortunetellers at the Earl’s Court exhibition; they’ll tell ye all about the fair woman you’re to beware of.’

‘There’s some of them said to be rather good,’ Sylvia said. ‘Di Wilson’s told me about one. She said she was going to have a baby.… You don’t mean that, Father? For I swear I never will.…’

‘I daresay not,’ the priest said. ‘But let’s talk about men.’

‘There’s nothing you can tell me I don’t know,’ Sylvia said.

‘I daresay not,’ the priest answered. ‘But let’s rehearse what you do know.