"Oh! indeed I do; and I know how to appeal to it. Even when I can't help laughing at things he ought not to say—and sometimes they are so droll I can't help it—afterwards I have my say and tell him really and soberly just what I think, and you've no idea how beautifully he takes it. Oh, Jim really is good at heart, there's no doubt about that."
"Do you think Aunt Maria's meddling will make trouble between you?"
"No! only that it's an awkward, disagreeable thing to speak of; but I shall speak to Jim about it and let him understand, if he doesn't now, just what Aunt Maria is, and that he mustn't mind anything she says. I feel rather better, now I've relieved my mind to you, and perhaps shall have more charity for Aunt Maria."
"After all, poor soul," said Eva, "it's her love for us that leads her to vex us in all these ways. She can't help planning and fussing and lying awake nights for us. She failed in getting a splendid marriage for me, and now she's like Bruce's spider, up and at her web again weaving a destiny for you. It's in her to be active; she has no children; her house don't half satisfy her as a field of enterprise, and she, of course, is taking care of Mamma and our family. If Mamma had not been just the gentle, lovely, yielding woman she is, Aunt Maria never would have got such headway in the family and taken such airs about us."
"She perfectly tyrannizes over Mamma," said Alice. "She's always coming up to lecture her for not doing this, that, or the other thing. Now all this talk about our going to Mr. St. John's church;—poor, dear, little Mamma is as willing to let us do as we please as the flowers are to blossom, and then Aunt Maria talks as if she were abetting a conspiracy against the church. I know that we are all living more serious, earnest lives for Mr. St. John's influence. It may be that he is going too far in certain directions; it may be that in the long run such things tend to dangerous extremes, but I don't see any real harm in them so far, and I find real good."
"Well, you know, dear, that Harry isn't of our church—he is a Congregationalist—but his theory is that Christian people should join with any other Christian people who they see are really working in earnest to do good. This church is near by us, where we can conveniently go, and as I have my house to attend to and am not strong you know, that is quite a consideration. I know Harry don't agree with Mr. St. John at all about his ideas of the church, and he thinks he carries some of his ceremonies too far; but, on the whole, he really is doing a great deal of practical good, and Harry is willing to help him. I think it's just lovely in Harry to do so. It is real liberality."
"I wish," said Alice, "that Mr. St. John were a little freer in his way. There is a sort of solemnity about him that is depressing, and it seems to set Jim off in a spirit of contradiction. He says Mr. St. John stirs up the evil within him, and makes him long to break over bounds and say something wicked, just to shock him."
"I've had that desire to shock very proper people in the days of my youth," said Eva. "I don't know what it comes from."
"I think," said Alice, "that, to be sure, this is an irreverent age, and New York is an irreverent place; but yet I think people may carry the outside air of reverence too far. Don't you? They impose a sort of constraint on everybody around them that keeps them from knowing the people they associate with. Mr. St. John, for instance, knows nothing about Jim, he never acts himself out before him."
"Oh, dear me," said Eva, "fancy what he would think if he should see Jim in one of his frolics."