"Mother Martha," said I, taking advantage of the first pause in
the succession of quaintly innocent questions which she was as
usual addressing to me, "I have been looking at that rough old
cross hanging between the windows, and fancying that it must
surely be some curiosity--"
"Hush! hush!" exclaimed the nun, "you must not speak of that as a
'curiosity'; the Mother Superior calls it a Relic."
"I beg your pardon," said I; "I ought to have chosen my
expressions more carefully--"
"Not," interposed Mother Martha, nodding to show me that my
apology need not be finished--"not that it is exactly a relic in
the strict Catholic sense of the word; but there were
circumstances in the life of the person who made it--" Here she
stopped, and looked at me doubtfully.
"Circumstances, perhaps, which it is not considered advisable to
communicate to strangers," I suggested.
"Oh, no!" answered the nun, "I never heard that they were to be
kept a secret. They were not told as a secret to me."
"Then you know all about them?" I asked.
"Certainly. I could tell you the whole history of the wooden
cross; but it is all about Catholics, and you are a Protestant."
"That, Mother Martha, does not make it at all less interesting to
me."
"Does it not, indeed?" exclaimed the nun, innocently. "What a
strange man you are! and what a remarkable religion yours must
be! What do your priests say about ours? Are they learned men,
your priests?"
I felt that my chance of hearing Mother Martha's story would be a
poor one indeed, if I allowed her to begin a fresh string of
questions.
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