“Indeed! Why?”
“Why, instead of making it of plain linen, you made it of damask, and you embroidered it with silk; whereas everything but French red marking cotton or white marking cotton is expressly prohibited by the rules. Nothing in the almanac is stated in plainer terms than this. St. Paul, you know, insisted that things should be done decently and in order, and we are bound to heed his injunction.”
“Ah, Father Tunicle, I am afraid I neglect St. Paul as much as I do my almanac. Will you believe I really didn’t know that he says anything about plain linen and French red marking cotton? I plead guilty.”
“No, Miss Cowdrick, you misunderstand me. I did not mean to indicate that the apostle is the authority for these things. Unhappily he does not allude to them. Whether he ought to have done so, is another question. Our authority for them is more recent, but it is not to be despised upon that account.”
“Of course not.”
“I have great difficulty in impressing the importance of these things upon the minds of some of our people. Despite my repeated injunctions, Mrs. Battersby brought back from the laundry the altar-cloth filled with starch, and in the midst of my distress over the discovery of this sacrilege, I perceived that the sexton had omitted to pin the fringe to the super-frontal. If we are to be made perfect through suffering, I feel that I am not far from perfection, unless these distressing occurrences shall cease.”
“It is terrible,” said Leonie, with tender sympathy in her voice.
“By the way, Miss Cowdrick,” said the pastor, “to turn to pleasanter themes. Cannot I enlist your more active interest in our church work? Will you not come into the Sunday-school as a teacher?”
“I am not competent to teach, I fear.”
“We can give you a class of girls or a class of boys, as you prefer. The boys’ class, which is named, ‘Little Lambs of the Flock,’ is, I fear, somewhat too unruly for you. Miss Bunner gave it up because the scholars would persist in pinching each other and quarrelling during the lesson. They are so rough and boisterous that I think it will be better to get a male teacher to manage them. But you could take the girls’ class, ‘The Zealous Workers,’ and perhaps persuade the pupils to surrender their present indifference to everything that is being done in either the Sunday-school or the church.”