Our Lisabel and Doctor Urquhart! I could not help laughing. Day and night—fire and water, would have best described their union.
Penelope now, though she has abused him so much—but that was Francis's fault,—would have suited him a deal better. They are more friendly than they used to be—indeed he is on good terms with all Rockmount. We feel, every one of us, I trust, that our obligations to him are of a kind of which we never can acquit ourselves while we live.
This great grief has been in many ways, like most afflictions, “a blessing in disguise.” It has drawn us altogether, as nothing but trouble ever does, as I did not think anything ever would, so queer a family are we. But we are improving. We do not now shut ourselves up in our rooms, hiding each in her hole like a selfish bear until feeding time—we assemble in the parlor—we sit and talk round papa's study-chair. There, this morning after church, we held a convocation and confabulation before papa came down.
And, strange to say—almost the first time such a thing ever happened in ours, though a clergyman's family—we talked about church and the sermon.
It was preached by the young man whom papa has been obliged to take as curate, and who, Penelope said, she feared would never suit, if he took such eccentric texts, and preached such out-of-the-way sermons as the one this morning. I asked what it was about, and was answered, “the cities of refuge.”
I fear I do not know my Bible—the historic portion of it—so well as I might; for I scandalized Penelope exceedingly by inquiring what were “the cities of refuge.” She declared any child in her school would have been better acquainted with the Old Testament, and I had it at my tongue's end to say that a good many of her children seemed far too glibly and irreverently acquainted with the Old Testament, for I once overheard a knot of them doing the little drama of Elijah, the mocking children, and the bears in the wood, to the confusion of our poor bald-headed organist, and their own uproarious delight, especially the two boys who enacted the bears. But 'tis wicked to teaze our good Penelope—at least I think it wicked now.
So I said nothing; but after the sermon had been well talked over as “extraordinary,” “unheard of in our church,” “such a mixing of politics and religion, and bringing up everyday subjects into the pulpit,”—for it seems he had alluded to some question of capital punishment, which now fills the newspapers—I took an opportunity of asking Doctor Urquhart what the sermon really had been about. I can often speak to him of things which I never should dream of discussing with my sisters, or even papa. For, whatever the subject is, he will always listen, answer, explain; either laughing away my follies, or talking to me seriously and kindly.
This time, though, he was not so patient; asked me abruptly, “Why I wanted to know?”
“About the sermon? From harmless curiosity. Or rather,”—for I would not wish him to think that in any religious matter I was guided by no higher motive than curiosity, “because I doubt Penelope's judgment of the curate. She is rather harsh sometimes.”
“Is she?”