"What is Mr. Herbert like?" he inquired.
"Oh! he is a good man in his way, but a back-boneless, sweet-syrupy kind of a Christian; one of the sort that seems to regard the Almighty as a blindly indulgent and easily-hoodwinked Father, and Satan himself as nothing worse than a rather crusty old bachelor uncle. You know the type."
"Perfectly; they always drawl, and use the adjective 'dear' in and out of season. I quite think that among themselves they talk of 'the dear devil.' And yet 'dear' is really quite a nice word, if only people like that hadn't spoiled it."
"You shouldn't let people spoil things for you in that way. That is one of your greatest faults, Christopher; whenever you have seen a funny side to anything you never see any other. You have too much humour and too little tenderness; that's what's the matter with you."
"Permit me to tender you a sincere vote of thanks for your exhaustive and gratuitous spiritual diagnosis. To cure my faults is my duty—to discover them, your delight."
"Well, I'm right; and you'll find it out some day, although you make fun of me now."
"I say, how will Mrs. Herbert fit in Tremaine's religious views—or rather absence of religious views—with her code of the next world's etiquette?" asked Christopher, wisely changing the subject.
"Oh! she'll simply decline to see them. Although, as I told you, she is driven about entirely by her conscience, it is a well-harnessed conscience and always wears blinkers. It shies a good deal at gnats, I own; but it can run in double-harness with a camel, if worldly considerations render such a course desirable. It is like a horse we once had, which always shied violently at every puddle, but went past a steamroller without turning a hair."
"'By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue,'" quoted Christopher.
"I don't want to be too severe, but Mrs. Herbert does make me so mad. When people put religious things in a horrid light, it makes you feel as if they were telling unkind and untrue tales about your dearest friends."