“Miss Adgate, we're not aristocratic,” Jack declared in a low voice. “We've just become low-down Provincials. But when I'm a man I mean to go and claim our lands and titles and our position in Devon. I'm the rightful heir! My father kept the Enderfield Tree in an old desk in the drawing-room. It's there, at this moment, in a tin tube, on parchment. I've often brought it out when my mother's at church and had a good look at it.”
“Try a chocolate,” interposed Ruth soothingly; but the image of the Enderfield tree in a tube made her laugh as she offered the lacquered box, inlaid with mother of pearl, which she kept filled for these occasions.
“You're a Catholic, Miss Adgate,” presently observed the youthful aristocrat when he had permitted Ruth's sweets to be thrust upon him.
“Yes,” said Ruth urbanely. And—“I wonder whether Jack is preparing to rend the Faith,” she thought.
“Well,” Jack announced with deliberation,
“I mean to be a Catholic when I'm done with all this.” He swept the present away with his hand.
“Ah?” said Ruth, surprised. “Why?”
“Oh, it's the only Faith for a Gentleman,” the boy answered. “For a gentleman and a scholar,” he emendated. “You see we're all compounded too much of human nature and we're all too much given to thinking. Yet our thinking leads nowhere,—in the end the flesh and the devil do what they like with us. We may sit with our heads between our hands, we may try to reconcile our human nature with idealism until we're ready for the madhouse, and we'll get to the madhouse, but we won't have solved the problem. Now a man wants to be decent, and the Catholic Faith (I got Mary to tell me a lot about it, and I've read about it in some of my father's books), while it makes allowances for human nature and treats it in the most sympathetic way, does know how to keep it within bounds. Why, it's a regular school of Saints! And it honestly recognises that we're mortal; inheritors of original sin as the spark flies upward. Yet if we go and confess our sins and try to feel sorry for 'em, we receive the grace of the Sacrament of Penance and Absolution,—and we can then receive the Blessed Sacrament. And when we receive the Blessed Sacrament our souls are developed and fed from God Himself and enabled to dominate our bodies.”
“I see you've been well instructed,” said Ruth, astonished at this boy's clear exposition.
“I got Mary to tell me a lot about the Catholic Faith, and I've read Bellarmine and Saint Augustine and a lot of my father's books,” repeated the boy, a little wearily. “But what I like best,” he said brightening again, “is that the Church is down on divorce.”