'Uncle Bryan is older than you--twenty years older--and has had more experience of the world; therefore he must know better than you. If it were right to go to church, he would go, for I am sure he is an upright and just man.'
At this direct reference to him uncle Bryan raised his head, and gazed fixedly at Jessie, and at her latter words something like a sneer passed into his face. My mother looked helplessly from one to another.
'I know,' said Jessie, 'that I am the cause of this trouble, and I wish--oh, I wish!--that I had never come into the house! No, I don't wish it, for then I should never have known you!' She stood very humbly before my mother. 'I feel how ungrateful I am: to uncle Bryan for giving me a home'--(how these words stung me!)--'and to you for giving me a love of which I am so undeserving.'
The tears came into her eyes, and I went towards her, but she moved a step from me; and thus apart from each other we four stood for a few moments in perfect silence--a house pulsing with love and tenderness, but divided against itself. Then Jessie said suddenly:
'Uncle Bryan, if I go to church this morning, will you come with us some time during the year?'
'No,' he replied sternly and firmly.
'I have asked you in the wrong way, perhaps,' she said; 'but that would not alter the thing itself.'
'Whichever way you asked me, my answer would have been the same, young lady.'
'If you tell me to go now, I will go.'
'I will tell you nothing. You are your own mistress.'