“Oh no!” breathed Frances.
“Oh yes!” cried Bertha cheerfully. “I can assure you that people do change their minds, astonishing though it may seem to you, my darling, and that even ten years hence you’ll feel quite differently about nearly everything under the sun. Tell me, don’t you see for yourself that you’ve changed a good deal since you were a little girl of fourteen or fifteen, even? Aren’t almost all your opinions, and values, and ambitions quite different?”
Frances reflected conscientiously and then replied rather timidly:
“No, Cousin Bertie. I don’t think they are.”
Bertha broke into her ringing laugh, her head flung back.
“Oh, my dear little girl! You’re even younger than I thought you were. It’s a shame to laugh at you when you’re so much in earnest—but you’ll laugh at yourself in a very little while. Oh, Francie, Francie!”
She laughed again, irrepressibly.
At last she became serious.
“Now, Frances, bar all joking. Tell me exactly why you want to join the Catholic Church.”
Frances noted gratefully that her guardian, speaking to her of the Catholic Church, did not use the prefix “Roman.”