"But I'm sure we don't any of us want you to make yourself sick."
"Oh, I sha'n't be sick. I may suffer; but I sha'n't give up. I'm not one of the kind. If you had the cold in your head that I have, Nellie, you'd be in bed, with both girls nursing you; but that isn't my way. I keep up, and attend to things. I want these things of Angie's to be got up properly, as they ought to be, and there's nobody to do it but me."
And little Mrs. Van Arsdel, used, from long habit, to be thus unceremoniously snubbed, dethroned, deposed, and set down hard by her sister when in full career of labor for her benefit, looked meekly into the fire, and comforted herself with the reflection that it "was just like Maria. She always talked so; but, after all, she was a good soul, and saved her worlds of trouble, and made excellent bargains for her."
[CHAPTER XLVII.]
"IN THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS."
This article of faith forms a part of the profession of all Christendom, is solemnly recited every Sunday and many week-days in the services of all Christian churches that have a liturgy, whether Roman or Greek or Anglican or Lutheran, and may, therefore, bid fair to pass for a fundamental doctrine of Christianity.
Yet, if narrowly looked into, it is a proposition under which there are more heretics and unbelievers than all the other doctrines of religion put together.
Mrs. Maria Wouvermans, standing, like a mother in Israel, in the most eligible pew of Dr. Cushing's church, has just pronounced these words with all the rest of the Apostles' Creed, which she has recited devoutly twice a day every Sunday for forty years or more. She always recited her creed in a good, strong, clear voice, designed to rebuke the indolent or fastidious who only mumbled or whispered, and made a deep reverence in the proper place at the name of Jesus; and somehow it seemed to feel as if she were witnessing a good confession, and were part and parcel with the protesting saints and martyrs that, in blue and red and gold, were shining down upon her through the painted windows. This solemn standing up in her best bonnet and reciting her Christian faith every Sunday, was a weekly testimony against infidelity and schism and lax doctrines of all kinds, and the good lady gave it with unfaltering regularity. Nothing would have shocked her more than to have it intimated to her that she did not believe the articles of her own faith; and yet, if there was anything in the world that Mrs. Maria Wouvermans practically didn't believe in, and didn't mean to believe in, it was "the forgiveness of sins."
As long as people did exactly right, she had fellowship and sympathy with them. When they did wrong, she wished to have nothing more to do with them. Nay, she seemed to consider it a part of public justice and good morals to clear her skirts from all contact with sinners. If she heard of penalties and troubles that befell evil doers, it was with a face of grim satisfaction. "It serves them right—just what they ought to expect. I don't pity them in the least," were familiar phrases with her. If anybody did her an injury, crossed her path, showed her disrespect or contumely, she seemed to feel as free and full a liberty of soul to hate them as if the Christian religion had never been heard of. And, in particular, for the sins of women, Aunt Maria had the true ingrain Saxon ferocity which Sharon Turner describes as characteristic of the original Saxon female in the earlier days of English history, when the unchaste woman was pursued and beaten, starved and frozen, from house to house, by the merciless justice of her sisters.