“Who?” gasped Alan, staggered now more than Michael. “Mrs. Ross—Aunt Maud?”
“It’s the most extraordinary thing I ever heard,” said Michael. “She—and Kenneth,” he added rather maliciously, seeing that Alan’s Britannic prejudice was violently aroused. “I’ll read you her letter.”
Plato was shut up for the evening before Michael was halfway through, and almost before the last sentence had been read, Alan’s wrath exploded.
“It’s all very fine for her to laugh like that at Joan and Mary and Nancy,” he said, coloring hotly. “But they were absolutely right, and Mrs. Ross—I mean Aunt Maud——”
“I was afraid you were going to disown the relationship,” Michael laughed.
“Aunt Maud is absolutely wrong. Why, my uncle would have been furious. Even if she became a Catholic she had no business to take Kenneth with her. The more I think of it—you know, it really is a bit thick.”
“Why do you object?” Michael asked curiously. “I never knew you thought about religion at all, except so far as occasionally to escort your mother politely to Matins, and that was after all to oblige her more than God. Besides, you’re reading Greats, and I always thought that the Greats people in their fourth year abstained from anything like a definite opinion for fear of losing their First.”
“I may not have a definite opinion about Christianity,” said Alan. “But Catholicism is ridiculous, anyway—it doesn’t suit English people.”
“There you’re treading on the heels of the School of Modern History which you affect to despise. You really don’t know, if I may say so, what could or could not suit the English people unless you know what has or has not suited them.”
“Why don’t you become a Catholic yourself,” challenged Alan, “if you’re so keen on them?”