“But no. Why you think that?” he added to her. “My father is a Roman Catholic: I am a Protestant, like my mother.”
“Then why on earth, sir, do you wear such a idol as that?” returned Hall.
“This? Oh, it is nothing! it is not an idol. It does me good.”
“Good!” fiercely repeated Hall. “Does you good to wear a brazen image next the skin!—right under the flannel waistcoat. I wonder what the school will come to next?”
“Why should I not wear it?” said Van Rheyn. “What harm does it do me, this? It was my poor Aunt Annette’s. The last time we went to the Aunt Claribelle’s to see her, when the hope of her was gone, she put the cross into my hand, and bade me keep it for her sake.”
“I tell you, Master Van Rheyn, it’s just a brazen image,” persisted Hall.
“It is a keepsake,” dissented Van Rheyn. “I showed it to Monsieur Mons one day when he was calling on mamma, and told him it was a gift to me of the poor Tante Annette. Monsieur Mons thought it very pretty, and said it would remind me of the great Sacrifice.”
“But to wear it next your skin,” went on Hall, not giving in. Giving in on the matter of graven images was not in her nature. Or on any matter as far as that went, that concerned us boys. “I’ve heard of poor misdeluded people putting horse-hair next ’em. And fine torment it must be!”
“I have worn it since mamma died,” quietly answered Van Rheyn, who did not seem to understand Hall’s zeal. “She kept it for me always in her little shell-box that had the silver crest on it; but when she died, I said I would put the cross round my neck, for fear of losing it: and Aunt Claribelle, who took the shell-box then, bought me the blue ribbon.”