Mrs. Ames set her mind at rest with regard to the second point, and inflamed it on the first.
“Oh, no!” she said. “Did you think he looked ill? How good of you to ask after him. But Lyndhurst is quite well. Mr. Pettit, a little more chicken? After your sermon.”
Mr. Pettit had a shrewd, ugly, delightful face, very lean, very capable. Humanly speaking, he probably abhorred Mrs. Ames. Humanely speaking, he knew there was a great deal of good in her, and a quantity of debateable stuff. He smiled, showing thick white teeth.
“Before and after my sermon,” he said. “Also before a children’s service and a Bible class. I cannot help thinking that God forgot his poor clergymen when he defined the seventh day as one of rest.”
Mrs. Ames hid a small portion of her little face with her little hand. She always said that Mr. Pettit was not like a clergyman at all.
“How naughty of you,” she said. “But I must correct you. The seventh day has become the first day now.”
Harry gave vent to a designedly audible sigh. The Omar Club were chiefly atheists, and he felt bound to uphold their principles.
“That is the sort of thing that confuses me,” he said. “Mr. Pettit says Sunday was called a day of rest, and my mother says that God meant what we call Monday, or Saturday. I have been behaving as if it was Tuesday or Wednesday.”
Mr. Pettit gave him a kindly glance.
“Quite right, my dear boy,” he said. “Spend your Tuesday or Wednesday properly and God won’t mind whether it is Thursday or Friday.”