“That is a very low view of life,” said Eleanor, shaking her head.
“I don’t care. I can’t help what I think; and it is against sense and reason to suppose that He made us to want husbands and children and happy homes, and all the other pleasant things, and then wished us to do without them.”
“Sense and reason are not the things to go by.”
“Oh, Eleanor! Do you mean to say God doesn’t speak in our sense and reason as well as in the Bible. If you do, I can only tell you I think you are a very irreverent person.”
“Kitty,” said Eleanor, looking pale and shocked, “it’s really dreadful to hear you talk. If I did not know you had been brought up in a country where the tone of Church teaching——”
“Oh, there, you needn’t go on,” I interrupted rather warmly, feeling a little like a wrestler who has been hit below the belt. “I know what you were going to say. I’ll candidly admit that I am a savage and a Hottentot, and save you the trouble. Is this the church? What a queer hole they have put it in!”
“Darling,” pleaded Eleanor, with tears in her soft eyes, as we paused on the threshold of the porch, and she laid her hand on my arm, “don’t be so impatient, for we must try to understand one another.”
I stooped suddenly and kissed her, and asked her pardon for my hastiness; and then we passed together into the church, where, to my surprise, quite a large congregation was assembled, and where my little companion was speedily on her knees, with her ungloved hands folded on the top rail of a rush-bottomed chair, absorbed in her devotions. I am free to confess that I did not attend to mine as I ought to have done. The splendour of the building, the exquisiteness of the music, the strange vestments of the clergy, the attitudes of awe and reverence all around me, particularly the appearance of several sisters of mercy in their black robes, the first I had ever seen, distracted my attention, in spite of me. It was not at all like what I had been used to.
Our walk back was a silent one. She with her red-leaved Prayer-book clasped lovingly in her hand, and a far-off rapt look in her face, seemed too much impressed and surrounded by the atmosphere of worship to wish to be talked to; and I, besides having some new ideas to think of, had an odd feeling of Sunday about me. There seemed something almost sacrilegious in the bustle of the cabs and omnibuses up and down, and the squeal of the hurdy-gurdy that played its music-hall airs to us as we passed, and more particularly in the longing that presently possessed me to have a good look into the shop windows. This sensation, however, was but transient. It evaporated in the brightness and colour of the streets and the breezy freshness of the sunny air.
I did not talk, but I looked to right and left on all there was to be seen, and made mental comments to myself; and I began to wonder whether we were going to South Kensington after lunch, as mother had proposed, and why Bertha and Bella were so enthusiastic about the cooking classes, when they evidently had no intention of ever cooking anything themselves. And when at last we came in view of my aunt’s house round a corner, and I saw a pair of the loveliest little bay horses I had ever dreamed of, each with a white star on its forehead, and not another light hair anywhere, and both fidgeting restlessly before the open hall-door, I did forget entirely that I had been to church and had felt as if it were Sunday. Eleanor slipped into the hall and stole up the great staircase, as if she were all alone in the world, and I stood rooted on the pavement and thought no more about her. A small groom, very dapper and polished, stood at those pretty creatures’ heads, and to him I addressed myself eagerly—“Whose are those horses?”