“Dear me,” exclaimed Ethel Blue, shaking her head gravely; “I don’t believe I could keep still as long as that.”
“I dare say it’s just as well that there is no meeting to-day,” said Mrs. Morton. “Any way, I don’t know that I should approve of your going to a religious service out of curiosity.”
Tom nodded in agreement with Mrs. Morton.
“I’m sure Father wouldn’t like it,” he said.
Tom’s father was a clergyman in New York.
“He doesn’t object to our going to other churches,” he went on, “but he has seen so much of tourists who come to New York and go around the city, taking in three or four churches on Sunday morning merely to hear the music or some celebrated speaker, that he has always warned us children against being ‘religious rubber-necks.’”
They all laughed and contented themselves with looking at the outside of the severely plain meeting-house.
The tour over the Mint was filled with interest for all of them.
“This is the oldest Mint in the United States,” the guide explained to them.
“What’s the date?” Helen could not resist asking, although Roger shook his head at her and Tom visibly smothered a smile.