"But don't let me discourage you, miss, if you've made up your mind to get married," added Martha, fearing that she had said too much, "if you must have a husband, perhaps Master Paul is the best sort you'll get; though bad's the best, to my thinking, with regard to husbands."
Tea that evening was a very cheerful meal at Chayford Cottage. Isabel was so charmed by the refinement and culture of Paul's home, that she was at her best. She found herself in an atmosphere of intellectual activity such as she was accustomed to, but combined with a simplicity of life and a familiarity with higher things such as she had never yet known; and the combination was very attractive to her.
"I shall have much to ask about your life in India, my dear," said Mr. Seaton to Isabel, as they all sat round the tea-table, "I have always longed to go there, and see for myself the remains of one of the world's oldest and most picturesque civilizations, but I shall never accomplish it now; so I must beg you to give me information second-hand."
"Martha is immensely impressed by your having lived in India," exclaimed Joanna; "but she has deliciously vague ideas about the place. I think she pictures it to herself as a 'coral strand' covered with undressed niggers, like the picture on the cover of the Missionary Notices."
"I am not sure that my ideas of India are not a good deal like that," Paul said; "only I add a few elephants and pagodas."
"She asked me the other day," continued Joanna, still addressing Isabel, "if I thought you had ever worshipped idols while you were in India."
Isabel sighed. "I am afraid I sometimes did; but they were not the native ones."
"Never mind, my dear," said Mrs. Seaton kindly; "we have all of us worshipped idols at some time or another—except, of course, the minister."
Her husband shook his head. "I am afraid, my love, that I have worshipped idols too; only I bound them in vellum and called them by theological names."
"I expect we have all got a little museum of cast-off idols somewhere in our hearts," remarked Isabel.