"Well, there are the girls, Alice and Angelique and Marie, where are they? All going up to that old Popish, ritualistic chapel, I suppose. It's too bad. Now, that's all the result of Mr. Simons's imprudences. I told you, in the time of it, just what it would lead to. It leads straight to Rome, just as I said. Mr. Simons set them a-going, and now he is gone and they go where they have lighted candles on the altar every Sunday, and Mr. St. John prays with his back to them, and has processions, and wears all sorts of heathenish robes; and your daughters go there, Nellie."
The very plumes in Aunt Maria's hat nodded with warning energy as she spoke.
"Are you sure the candles are lighted?" said Mrs. Van Arsdel, sitting up with a weak show of protest, and looking gravely into the fire. "I was up there once, and there were candles on the altar, to be sure, but they were not lighted."
"They are lighted," said Mrs. Wouvermans, with awful precision. "I've been up there myself and seen them. Now, how can you let your children run at loose ends so, Nellie? I only wish you had heard the sermon this morning. He showed the danger of running into Popery; and it really was enough to make one's blood run cold to hear how those infidels are attacking the church, carrying all before them; and then to think that the only true church should be all getting divided and mixed up and running after Romanism! It's perfectly awful."
"Well, I don't know what we can do," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, helplessly.
"And we've got both kinds of trouble in our family. Eva's husband is reading all What's-his-name's works—that evolution man, and all that; and then Eva and the girls going after this St. John—and he's leading them as straight to Rome as they can go."
Poor Mrs. Van Arsdel was somewhat fluttered by this alarming view of the case, and clasped her pretty, fat, white hands, that glittered with rings like lilies with dew-drops, and looked the image of gentle, incapable perplexity.
"I don't believe Harry is an infidel," she said at last. "He has to read Darwin and all those things, because he has to talk about them in the magazine; and as to Mr. St. John—you know Eva is delicate and can't walk so far as our church, and this is right round the corner from her; and Mr. St. John is a good man. He does ever so much for the poor, and almost supports a mission there; and the Bishop doesn't forbid him, and if the Bishop thought there was any danger, he would."
"Well, I can't think, for my part, what our Bishop can be thinking of," said Aunt Maria, who was braced up to an extraordinary degree by the sermon of the morning. "I don't see how he can let them go on so—with candles, and processions, and heathen robes, and all that. I'd process 'em out of the church in quick time. If I were he, I'd have all that sort of trumpery cleaned out at once; for just see where it leads to! I may not be as good a Christian as I ought to be—we all have our short-comings—but one thing I know, I do hate the Catholics and all that belongs to them; and I'd no more have such goings on in my diocese than I'd have moths in my carpet! I'd sweep 'em right out!" said Aunt Maria, with a gesture as if she held the besom of destruction.