“How ridiculous it is! How absurd you are, making up grand speeches to say to God! How silly it is to be kneeling in this stuffy, dusty room, telling God things that He knows already! How disgusting this waterproof smells!”
She jerked it off with an impatient movement, and it fell upon the head of the girl who knelt next to her, enveloping her in its voluminous folds. She struggled wildly to free herself, “like a cat with its head in a jug,” as Bridget afterwards described the episode, and she began to laugh, softly at first; then the desperate struggles of the girl redoubled themselves so uncontrollably that the form shook, and Essie Langford, who knelt at her left, raised her head sharply, with a sigh of relief when she discovered the cause. Essie’s conversion at the best of times hardly deserved the skin-deep description. Bridget had insisted upon it, as a matter of fact, and now her shallow, pleasure-loving little soul rejoiced, foreseeing the end.
Mary Morton, who was praying, began the first words of the Lord’s Prayer; and when the murmur of response was at its fullest, Essie seized her opportunity.
“Bridget!” Bridget had controlled her laughter, and there was no reply to the whisper.
“Bid!” urged Essie.
“‘Thy will be done’— What?” answered Bridget. The last word was jerked out impatiently, as if in spite of herself.
“The little ones are playing rounders, awfully badly.”
“Be quiet! I know it. Let me think!” she whispered back fiercely; “‘and lead us not into temptation,’” she added, mechanically following the voice of the praying girl.
The Amen was followed by the silence of private prayer, broken suddenly by a quick, decided movement from Bridget, who all at once sprang to her feet. Every head was raised curiously, and in a moment or two every girl had risen from her knees.
“Wait a minute!” Bridget cried, “I began these meetings, so I ought to tell you I’m not coming to any more of them. I’m tired of them. I don’t believe it interests God a bit to see us all kneeling down in this horrid dusty room; and He can hear much better prayers in church.”