"Don't they?" asked Gabrielle, ignoring Missy, and turning her great eyes up appealingly into St. John's face, as she leaned on the arm of his chair.
"No, I should think not," said St. John, slowly, putting his hand on hers.
"Translate it into words of one syllable, St. John," said Missy, poking a pine-knot into blaze, "that people go to church for worship, not for edification."
"Well, children," he said, "no doubt you have always been taught to go and say good-morning to your father, and give him a kiss, haven't you? And you generally do it, though it doesn't do you any particular good, nor, for the matter of that, very much to him. But he likes it, and you always ought to go. Maybe sometimes you don't want to go; sometimes you're busy playing, or you're hungry for your breakfast, or you're a little lazy. But if you always give up your play, or put off your breakfast, or get over being lazy, and go, no doubt you have done right, and he is pleased with you. Now, going to church is a service, a thing to be done, to be offered to God; it isn't that we may be better, or learn something, or get any good, that we go. It is to pay an honor to our Heavenly Father; it is something to give to Him, an offering. I think we should be glad, don't you? There are so few things we can give Him."
Gabrielle was not convinced, and offered objections manifold, but Jay said "All right, he'd go next time without crying, if Goneril didn't brush his hair so hard."
"You mustn't get her into an argument, then," said Missy. "The faster she talks, the harder she brushes."
"You won't be here another Sunday, Jay," said Gabby. "You'll have your own nurse, and maybe she'll brush easy."
The children were soon sent to bed, and then St. John went away.
"I have something to tell you, Missy," said her mother. "Come to my room before you go to bed."
Missy's heart beat faster. Now she should know the explanation of her mother's tears, and St. John's long silences.