“Rodie, I want to speak to you of something. It’s long past, and it has nothing to do with you or me. Rodie, do you mind yon afternoon, when we were shut up in the turret, and heard papa studying his sermon?”
“What’s about that? You’ve minded me of it many a time: but if I was to be always minding like you, what good would that do?”
“I wanted to ask you, Rodie—sometimes you mind better than me, sometimes not so well. Do you mind what he was saying? I want to be just sure for once, and then never to think upon it again.”
“What does it matter what he was saying? It was just about one of the parables.” I am afraid the parables were just “a thing in the Bible” to Rodie. He did not identify them much, or think what they meant, or wherein one differed from another. This, I need not say, was not for want of teaching: perhaps it was because of too much teaching, which sometimes has a similar effect. “I mind,” he said with a laugh, “we were just that crampit, sitting so long still, that we couldn’t move.”
“Yes, yes,” said Elsie, “but I want to remember quite clear what it was he said.”
“It did not matter to us what he said,” said Rodie. “Papa is sometimes a foozle, but I am not going to split upon him.” This was the slang of those days, still lingering where golf is wont to be played.
“Do you think I would split upon him?” cried Elsie with indignation.
“I don’t know, then, what you’re carrying on about. Yes, I mind he said something that was very funny; but then he often does that. Fathers are so fond of saying things, that you don’t know what they mean, and ministers worse than the rest. There’s the first jow of the bell, and it’s time to get your bonnet on. I’m not for biding here havering; and then that makes us late.”
“You’re keen about being in time this morning, Rodie!”
“I’m always keen for being in time. When you come in late, you see on all their faces: ‘There’s the minister’s family just coming in—them that ought to set us an example—and we’ve been all here for a quarter of an hour.’”