"Likely! Set a rogue to catch a rogue," said Aunt Maria. "It's his being seen so much with Alice that I'm thinking of. You may depend upon it, it has a bad effect."
Mrs. Van Arsdel dreaded the setting of her sister's mind in this direction, so by way of effecting a diversion she rang and inquired when tea would be ready. As the door opened, the sound of very merry singing came up stairs. Angelique was seated at the piano and playing tunes out of one of the Sunday-school manuals, and the whole set were singing with might and main. Jim's tenor could be heard above all the rest.
"Why, is that fellow here?" said Aunt Maria.
"Yes," said Mrs. Van Arsdel; "he very often stays to tea with us Sunday nights, and he and the girls sing hymns together."
"Hymns!" said Aunt Maria. "I should call that a regular jollification that they are having down there."
"Oh, well, Maria, they are singing children's tunes out of one of the little Sunday-school manuals. You know children's tunes are so different from old-fashioned psalm tunes!"
Just then the choir below struck up
"Forward, Christian soldier,"
with a marching energy and a vivacity that was positively startling, and, to be sure, not in the least like the old, long-drawn, dolorous strains once supposed to be peculiar to devotion. In fact, one of the greatest signs of progress in our modern tunes is the bursting forth of religious thought and feeling in childhood and youth in strains gay and airy as hope and happiness—melodies that might have been learned of those bright little "fowls of the air," of whom the Master bade us take lessons, so that a company of wholesome, healthy, right-minded young people can now get together and express themselves in songs of joy, and hope, and energy, such as childhood and youth ought to be full of.