"But the east is a perfectly harmless point of the compass," said Jim, with suavity; "and though I don't want candles in the daytime myself, yet I don't see what harm it does anybody to burn them."
"Why, that's just what the Catholics do," said Mrs. Wouvermans.
"Oh, that's it, is it!" said Jim, with a submissive air. "Mustn't we do any thing that Catholics do?"
"No, indeed," said Aunt Maria, falling into the open trap with affecting naïveté.
"Then we mustn't pray at all," said Jim.
"Oh, pshaw! of course I didn't mean that. You know what I mean."
"Certainly, ma'am. I think I understand," said Jim, while Alice, who had been looking reprovingly at him, led off the subject into another strain.
But Mrs. Wouvermans was more gracious to Jim that evening than usual, and when she rose to go home that young gentleman offered his attendance, and was accepted with complacency.
Mrs. Wouvermans, in a general way, believed in what is called Providence. That is to say, when any little matter fell out in a manner exactly apposite to any of her schemes, she called it providential. On the present occasion, when she found herself walking in the streets of New York alone, in the evening, with a young man who treated her with flattering deference, it could not but strike her as a providential opportunity not to be neglected of fulfilling her long-cherished intentions and giving a sort of wholesome check and caution to the youth. So she began with infinite adroitness to prepare the way. Jim, the while, who saw perfectly what she was aiming at, assisting her in the most obliging manner.