"I am sure I don't know," Col. Baker said, at last. "I have very little idea what he would consider the harm; I am not sure that he would be able to tell. It is probably a narrow, strait-laced way that the cloth have of looking at this question, in common with all other questions, save prayer-meetings and almsgiving. Their lives are very much narrowed down, Miss Flossy."
Flossy was entirely unsatisfied. She had a higher opinion of Dr. Dennis' "breadth" than she had of Col. Baker's; she thought his life had a very much higher range; she was very much puzzled and annoyed. Her father came into the conflict:
"Come, come, Flossy, how long are you going to keep us waiting? It is of no particular consequence what Dr. Dennis thinks or does not think. He has a right to his own opinions. It is a free country."
Ah, but it did make a tremendous difference to Flossy. She had accepted Dr. Dennis as her pastor; she had determined to look to him for help and guidance in this new and strange path on which her feet had so lately entered.
She wondered if Col. Baker could be right. Was it possible that Dr. Dennis disapproved of cards played at home in this quiet way! If he did, why did he? And, another puzzling point, how did Col. Baker know it? They two certainly did not come in contact, that they should understand each other's ideas.
She went on with her card-playing, but she played very badly. More than once Col. Baker rallied her with good-humored sarcasm, and her father spoke impatiently. Flossy's interest in the game was gone; instead, her heart was busy with this new idea. She went back to it again in one of her pauses in the game.
"Col. Baker, don't you really know at all what arguments clergymen have against card-playing for amusement?"
Again that expressive shrug; but it had lost its power over Flossy, and its owner saw it, and made haste to answer her waiting eyes.
"I really am not familiar with their weapons of warfare; probably I could not appreciate them if I were; I only know that the entire class frown upon all such innocent devices for passing a rainy evening. But it never struck me as strange, because the fact is, they frown equally on all pastimes and entertainments of any sort; that is, a certain class do—fanatics, I believe, is the name they are known by. They believe, as nearly as I am capable of understanding their belief, that life should be spent in psalm-singing and praying."
Whereupon Flossy called to mind the witty things she had heard, and the merry laughs which had rung around her at Chautauqua, given by the most intense of these fanatics; she even remembered that she had seen two of the most celebrated in that direction playing with a party of young men and boys on the croquet ground, and laughing most uproariously over their defeat. It was all nonsense to try to compass her brain with such an argument as that; she shook her head resolutely.