It now developed that in the meantime there had been a sudden change in certain details of religious belief.
“You see, mother?” said Stoffel. “Just as I’ve always said, it would take a lawyer to explain anything to suit her. She always knows better——”
“That’s so,” answered the mother. “She’s cracked or crazy. Now, just tell me, Stoffel, if anyone can expect such a child to remember everything a preacher says. I can’t do it myself; and you can’t do it, either. Master Pennewip can’t do it. I tell you, nobody can do it. And to require that of such a child! She just wants to play the professor; that’s the reason she does it.”
Stoffel was of the same opinion. Encouraged by his sympathy the mother became eloquent.
“I would like to know what she’s thinking about; or if she thinks she’s a pastor. With all her biblical quotations! And then to torment a child hardly out of a sick bed—it’s a disgrace. You don’t need to go to her. What business have you got with her? I tell you——”
Here it occurred to her that she herself had compelled Walter to go, and she interrupted this line of thought to scold Walter and tell him to get out of his Sunday breeches. Her dissatisfaction with herself expressed itself further in a funeral oration on Walter’s last suit, which had cost so much “hard work.”
“And then to let that child sit there for an hour without anything to eat or drink! She would——”
Walter’s feeling for justice couldn’t let that pass. He assured them that on the contrary—and then that excessive kindness got in his way again. In his confusion he went into all the details of the chocolate.
“Well! Why didn’t you say so at once? But it’s all the same. I was going to add that she ought to have given you something to eat. That’s the way such folks are—always grumbling about others and they won’t see themselves. I believe in grace too, and when I have my housework done I like to hear the Scripture read—but to be everlastingly and eternally prating about it? No, that isn’t religion. What do you say, Stoffel? One must work part of the time. Walter! aren’t you going to pull off those new breeches? I’ve told him a dozen times. Trudie, give him his old ones!”
Walter changed his breeches; but he promised himself that in Africa he would wear Sunday breeches every day.