"O Lewis," said Louise, when they were alone again, "if he had only asked to read a few verses in the Bible and offered prayer before he went. I certainly thought he would do it; isn't it strange that he did not?"
"Why, yes," said Lewis. "As a minister it would have been entirely in keeping. I wonder he did not suggest it."
"Why didn't you suggest it, Lewis? I was hoping you would; that was what I meant by all those telegraphic communications I was trying to make."
"My dear Louise," said her husband, "that was my father's place, not mine."
[CHAPTER XIV.]
DUST AND DOUBT.
THE scheme to visit the dingy church on Wednesday afternoon, and contribute somewhat to its attractiveness, was carried out to the very letter. Mrs. Morgan, senior, made sundry dry remarks about not being aware that any of her family had been hired to put the church in order; but Farmer Morgan declared that it certainly needed it as much as any place he ever saw—that he would be ashamed to have a barn look as that did; and John declared that he had promised to stop the squeak in that old organ, and he meant to do it, hired or not hired.
Louise, who had not heard him promise, and who had felt much anxiety lest he would refuse to perform, was so elated over this declaration that, with her husband's help, she parried her mother-in-law's thrusts with the utmost good-humour, helped by the fact that, whatever she might say, that strange woman actually felt glad over the thought of her young people going off together like other folks.
The efforts of Mrs. Morgan's life had been spent in keeping her children from being "like other folks," and yet, with strange inconsistency, she liked to see these approaches to other people's ways of doing things.
If she could have explained what her sore and disappointed heart had meant, it would have revealed the fact that she intended her children to be superior to; not isolated from, the society around them.