“Church fowls, church fowls, you know! Mustn’t discourage them. Pious fowls! Godly fowls! An example for the parish. Better attendance lately.”
Then he caught up the two ladies and helped them into the vehicle, wishing them a pleasant drive and promising a nearly full moon shortly, after Medworth, very much as if the moon was really made of cheese and would be eaten for supper by Miss Horne and Miss Hobart.
When Sylvia got back to The Old Farm she amused Philip so much with her account of the service that he forgot to be angry with her for doing what at first he maintained put him in a false position.
All that autumn and winter Miss Horne and Miss Hobart wrestled with Satan for the souls of the hamlet; incidentally they wrestled with him for Sylvia’s soul, but she scratched the event by ceasing to appear at all in church, and intercourse between them became less frequent; the friends of Miss Horne and Miss Hobart had to be all or nothing, and not the least divergence of belief or opinion, manners or policy, was tolerated by these two bigoted old ladies. The congregation, notwithstanding their efforts, remained stationary, much to Philip’s satisfaction.
“The truth is,” he said, “that the measure of their power is the pocket. Every scamp in the parish who thinks it will pay him to go to church is going to church. The others don’t go at all or walk over to Medworth.”
Her contemplation of the progress of religion in Green Lanes, which, however much she affected to laugh at it, could not help interesting Sylvia on account of her eccentric friend the vicar, was temporarily interrupted by a visit from Gertrude Iredale. Remembering what Miss Ashley had told her, Sylvia had insisted upon Philip’s asking his sister to stay, and he had obviously been touched by her suggestion. Gertrude perhaps had also taken some advice from Miss Ashley, for she was certainly less inclined to wonder what her brother would do about his clothes the year after next. She could not, however, altogether keep to herself her criticism of the housewifery at The Old Farm, a simple business in Sylvia’s eyes, which consisted of letting the cook do exactly as she liked, with what she decided were very satisfactory results.
“But it’s so extravagant,” Gertrude objected.
“Well, Philip doesn’t grumble. We can afford to pay a little extra every week to have the house comfortably run.”
“But the principle is so bad,” Gertrude insisted.
“Oh, principle,” said Sylvia in an airy way, which must have been galling to her sister-in-law. “I don’t believe in principles. Principles are only excuses for what we want to think or what we want to do.”