“I will consider the matter, and let you have my answer as speedily as possible,” replied Leonie.
“Do, please. And I must speak to your father again about my assistant, Father Krum. He is not in sympathy with me, and it would be better for both of us if he could be removed.”
“It is so unfortunate,” said Leonie.
“I have told him repeatedly that his stole must always match the color of the frontal of the altar; but you perhaps noticed last Sunday that he came in with a black stole, and, of course, with a green frontal, all hope of a harmonious combination of colors was gone. It spoiled the entire service for me.”
“For me too,” said Leonie.
“Sometimes I think Krum is wilfully perverse and obstinate. Upon several recent occasions he has read the Epistle upon the Gospel side, and the Gospel upon the Epistle side, and when I remonstrated with him, after church, he was positively offensive. He said that if the people only listened to the Scripture and heeded it, he couldn’t see why it made any difference whether he stood upon one side or the other, or balanced himself on top of the chancel rail. Scandalous, wasn’t it?”
“Perfectly scandalous.”
“He seems to take pleasure in destroying the effect of the finest groupings that I arrange in the chancel with him and the acolytes; and when I proposed to introduce an orchestra, led by Professor Batterini, whom I should dress in a surplice, Krum had the insolence to say that he did not believe that there was any use of trying to preach the Gospel to the poor with a brass band. The man seems to be lost to all sense of reverence.”
“Entirely lost,” said Leonie.
“And as for praying to the east, that he appears determined not to do. Of course, with the incorrect orientation of the church, we have only a ‘supposititious east,’ and Krum insists that if I have a right to suppose the north-northwest, I think it is, to be the east, he is equally entitled to suppose the southwest or due south to be east, and so he does as he pleases. When he said, the other day, that in his opinion more depended upon the frame of mind in which the prayers were said, than upon the particular point of the compass towards which the supplications were presented, I did not answer him. Such a man is almost beyond the reach of argument.”