"It is poison," says Clarissa, who never does anything by halves, and who is nothing if not sympathetic.
"Well so I said; and when I had expostulated with them, mildly but firmly, and suggested that better flour might make better dough, and they had declined to take any notice of my protest,—why, I just ordered my bread from the Burtons opposite, and——"
The vicar pauses.
"And you have been happy ever since?"
"Well, yes, my dear. I suppose in a way I have; that is, I have ceased to miss the inevitable breakfast-lecture on the darkness and coarseness of the bread; but I have hardly gained on other points, and the Batesons are a perpetual scourge. They have decided on never again 'darkening the church door' (their own words, my dear Clarissa), because I have taken the vicarage custom from them. They prefer imperilling their souls to giving up the chance of punishing me. And now the question is, whether I should not consent to the slow poisoning of my children, rather than drive my parishioners into the arms of the Methodists, who keep open house for all comers below the hill."
"I don't think I should poison the children," says Clarissa.
"But what is to become of my choir? Charlotte Bateson has the sweetest voice in it, and now she will not come to church. I am at my wits' end when I think of it all."
"I am going to supply Charlotte's place for you," says Clarissa, slyly.
"Thank you, my dear. But, you see, you would never be in time. And, unfortunately, the services must begin always at a regular hour. Punctuality was the one thing I never could teach you,—that, and the Catechism."
"What a libel!" says Clarissa. "I shouldn't malign my own teaching if I were you. I am perfectly certain I could say it all now, this very moment, from start to finish, questions and all, without a mistake. Shall I?"