“You’ll have to say them with me,—Jean does,” she said, while Kenneth felt the cold sweat trickling down his back as he replied:
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
There was a quick uplifting of the golden head, and Connie’s blue eyes looked wonderingly at him.
“Why, ‘Now I lay me,’ and ‘Our Father,’ and the collect. Auntie is particular about that.”
Kenneth sweat still more, for he had no idea what she meant by a collect. Such a thing was no part of the service in the church of The 4 Corners, or, if it was, they did not call it by that. He knew “Now I lay me” and “Our Father,” and used to say them, but had given them up, influenced by Hal, who said they were too big for such childish things. As deacon of the church, his father asked a blessing at the table, and had family prayers Sunday morning, but what the mischief a collect was Kenneth could not guess. Mrs. Hart, he knew, belonged to a church, like St. Jude’s at Rocky Point, and with the rather narrow views in which he had been educated, he fancied a collect might be something heretical, or, at least, not quite orthodox. “Now I lay me” and “Our Father” were all right, and he began to repeat them, stammeringly, but Connie’s steady voice gave him courage and he kept on to the close, when he made a motion to get up.
“Wait, there’s a lot more, and you, Kitty, keep quiet,” Connie said.
The cat kept quiet, and Kenneth waited while Connie went on: “God bless Auntie and Guardy. I put him in because he saved papa’s life.” This to Kenneth. Then she continued: “Bless Jean, and make me a good girl; bless Kenneth and make him a good boy. (I am putting you in because I like you.) Amen!”
Kenneth was sweating now like rain, not cold sweat, but hot, which stood in drops upon his face, and there were tears in his eyes as he thought what a miserable lout he was compared with this little girl, who was not through with him yet.
“Now I must say the collect, and you must begin, for it’s so long. I don’t know half of it,” she said, with a little cuff at the cat, which was trying to escape.
“I don’t believe I know it, either. Can’t you skip it?” Kenneth asked, and Connie answered: