“There’s Mr Stone!” cried Gertrude inconsequently, and in a relieved tone, for Lettice was leading in a direction whither she had no wish to follow. “Look! isn’t he a fine young man? What a shame to have christened so comely a man by so ugly a name as Jeremy!”
“Do you think so? It is a beautiful name; it means ‘him whom God hath appointed,’—Aunt Edith says so.”
“Think you I care what it means!” was the answer, in a rather vexed tone, though it was accompanied by a laugh. “’Tis ugly and old-fashioned, child. Now your cousin, Mr Louvaine, has a charming name. But fancy having a name with a sermon wrapped up in it!”
“I do not understand!” said Lettice a little blankly. “You seem to think little of those things whereof I have been taught to think much; and to think much of those things whereof I have been led to think little. It puzzles me. Excuse me.”
Gertrude laughed more good-naturedly.
“My dear little innocence!” said she. “I am sorry to let the cold, garish daylight in upon your pretty little stained-glass creed: it is never pleasant to have scales taken from your eyes. But really, you look on things in such false colours, that needs must. Why, my child, if you were to go out into the world, you would find all those fancies laughed to scorn. ’Tis only Puritans love sermons and Bibles and such things. No doubt they are all right, and good, and all that; quite proper for Sunday, and sick-beds, and so on. I am not an infidel, of course. But then—well?”
Lettice’s face of utter amazement arrested the flow of words on Gertrude’s lips.
“Would your mother think you loved her, Gertrude, if you told her you never wanted to see her except on Sundays and when you were sick? And if God hears all we say, is it not as good as telling Him that? You puzzle me more and more. I have been taught that the world is the enemy of God, and refuses to guide its ways by His Word: but you speak as if it were something good, that we ought to look up to, and hearken what it bids us. It cannot be both. And what God says about it must be true.”
“Lettice, whatever one says, you always come back to your Puritan stuff. I wish you would be natural, like other maids. See, I am about to turn you over to Dorothy. Let us see if she can make something of you—I cannot.—Here, Doll! come and sit here, and talk with Lettice. I want to go and speak to Grissel yonder.”
Dorothy sat down obediently in the window-seat.