“All! I don’t know what the result will be to that nervous delicate child. She is shrieking in there and nothing will quiet her. What do you mean by playing such a game on Sunday, and making a jest of sacred things? No, not a word—” for the Story Girl had attempted to speak. “You and Peter march off home. And the next time I find you up to such doings on Sunday or any other day I’ll give you cause to remember it to your latest hour.”
The Story Girl and Peter went humbly home and we went with them.
“I CAN’T understand grown-up people,” said Felix despairingly. “When Uncle Edward preached sermons it was all right, but when we do it it is ‘making a jest of sacred things.’ And I heard Uncle Alec tell a story once about being nearly frightened to death when he was a little boy, by a minister preaching on the end of the world; and he said, ‘That was something like a sermon. You don’t hear such sermons nowadays.’ But when Peter preaches just such a sermon, it’s a very different story.”
“It’s no wonder we can’t understand the grown-ups,” said the Story Girl indignantly, “because we’ve never been grown-up ourselves. But THEY have been children, and I don’t see why they can’t understand us. Of course, perhaps we shouldn’t have had the contest on Sundays. But all the same I think it’s mean of Uncle Alec to be so cross. Oh, I do hope poor Sara won’t have to be taken to the asylum.”
Poor Sara did not have to be. She was eventually quieted down, and was as well as usual the next day; and she humbly begged Peter’s pardon for spoiling his sermon. Peter granted it rather grumpily, and I fear that he never really quite forgave Sara for her untimely outburst. Felix, too, felt resentment against her, because he had lost the chance of preaching his sermon.
“Of course I know I wouldn’t have got the prize, for I couldn’t have made such an impression as Peter,” he said to us mournfully, “but I’d like to have had a chance to show what I could do. That’s what comes of having those cry-baby girls mixed up in things. Cecily was just as scared as Sara Ray, but she’d more sense than to show it like that.”
“Well, Sara couldn’t help it,” said the Story Girl charitably, “but it does seem as if we’d had dreadful luck in everything we’ve tried lately. I thought of a new game this morning, but I’m almost afraid to mention it, for I suppose something dreadful will come of it, too.”
“Oh, tell us, what is it?” everybody entreated.
“Well, it’s a trial by ordeal, and we’re to see which of us can pass it. The ordeal is to eat one of the bitter apples in big mouthfuls without making a single face.”
Dan made a face to begin with.