“You see, Aunt, I don’t really care what church I go to; I’m only a Catholic for social convenience.”
“That’s too bad, isn’t it?” She was putting on her bonnet.
“I don’t know, I don’t seem to have any feeling about it one way or another. I never could seem to learn much about God, Aunt, don’t you remember?”
“But don’t you believe in Him, Jane?”
“Honestly, Aunt, I don’t know. Sometimes I wish I could, but that’s when I’m in trouble and only because I want some one to help me out. That’s not believing, is it? It’s just cowardice.”
My aunt grunted. “Religion mostly is, but there’s something else, like what your grandmother had.”
“Yes, I know.”
She said no more, and I was grateful to her for taking it like that. We were companions in spite of everything.
But when my Aunt Beth came with her husband to visit us things became more difficult. She had taken my turning Roman Catholic as a dreadful personal problem of her own, and felt, dear little soul, that she must try to bring me back to the fold. The result was painful. She came armed with tracts and pamphlets, a whole bag full of appalling literature. I was greatly astonished, for I remembered her as a very gentle little creature. With age she had grown militant in the cause of evangelical truth. She took me to camp meetings and prayer meetings. She would come into my room at night in her pink flannel dressing gown, her little middle-aged face aglow with ecstatic resolve, and would press into my hand just one more message, a dreadful booklet, “The Murder of God’s Word,” or something of that kind. I was at last driven to appeal to my Aunt Patience for protection. She took up the cudgels for me.
“I guess Jane’s all right, Beth, I wouldn’t worry. God’s the same, whatever your Church.”