"Well, I must admit that I admire both your taste and your—precipitation," she said, smiling on him in the friendliest fashion.
I had not had time before to give the matter a thought, but it dawned upon me then that nobody save my imperial Richard would have had the temerity to call a rich diamond merchant from his warm bed on a Sunday morning and have him go forth with tools in hand to set a jewel. Surely he could do anything he wished! He possesses an undoubted power over men, and a high-handed, yet charming way of having people do as he desires them to. Cousin Eunice was already showing signs of weakening from her harsh judgment of the earlier morning. I remembered suddenly the slim, satiny horse he was driving the day I first saw him, and how he spoke only a word to her when she became frightened at Alfred's car. She at once obeyed the influence of his voice. Tyrant? He is no tyrant. He manages to get his way always by being so lovable and so charming that it is a pleasure to give in to him.
"Well, shall we be off to church?" he asked as Cousin Eunice went out into the hall to meet Waterloo, who was just then returning from Sunday-school.
"If you prefer. I always try to take a long walk on Sunday morning. It makes me feel so good and holy somehow!"
He smiled. "And don't you feel that way in church?" he asked.
"No—except when the big pipe-organ is playing. I love the feeling of cathedrals, without any organ, but I know that this is only a revel to the senses, and it seems wicked to go—just for that."
He laughed outright. "So you think that people ought to get spiritual upliftment from going to church, do you?"
"I do. And if they get no such upliftment I think they ought to have respect enough for their Maker to stay away!"
"Their Maker? Are you so old-fashioned as to think that there is much worship in these churches—with their paid singers and their paid preachers and their heedless, gossiping throngs?"
"There is some worship. For the sake of those few I feel that the reverential spirit ought always to be carried there. But I am like you. I scorn hypocrisy. The sight of a notoriously immoral deacon or steward sickens me with church-going for months. So I get my spiritual upliftment from going near to nature's heart. The birds and the bees are not orthodox—neither are they hypocrites."