But his strength waxed so great, his temper so uncertain, that practically he was allowed to go his way. From this time forward not even Aphra was able to control him. More than once he had threatened her life with his clasp knife. Still she did not insist upon his leaving the house. As the head of the family, she was responsible for all. Jeremy was a prodigal son, but still a son—indeed, the only son of the house. Her father had confided him to Aphra, and she would be faithful to her trust.
It was about this time that the family became touched with that mystic spirit which Mr. Ablethorpe had thought to utilize in leading them to better things. But the attempt was vain from the first.
Even at Bristol an attempt to walk in procession upon the street with white banners and mystic emblems awoke so much mingled hostility and mirth that the police were fain to interfere. And an assault made by Honorine upon a visiting bishop of Low Church tendencies, who dared to preach in a Geneva gown, led to the closing of the boot shop and their migration once more to the north.
Everywhere they went Honorine was the bane of custodians of High Anglican and Catholic churches. She insisted upon spending the whole day in such buildings, kneeling for hours together before the sacred pictures, especially those representing favourite saints, making her stations of the cross several times a day, and representing to the distressed church officers (who wanted their dinners) that it was no time to think of earthly nourishment here below—because at any moment their brains might be sucked up by a steam engine even as hers had been. She continued, therefore, in spite of gowned Anglican church officers, magnificent Catholic "Suisses," and arrogant parish beadles, to do penance for sins which she had never committed.
"There are enough misdeeds in the family, though, to keep you at penance all your life," grunted Jeremy with a grin, as Honorine finished her confession. "You did quite right, Honor; I always said that you had more sense than Aphra!"
"Aphra is wise," said her sister, "but she does not know that, owing to my prolonged studies in the Book of Nature, I am enabled to cure toothache."
From the date of their leaving Bristol the family had gone where the determined Aphra had led them. Their longest time of refuge was in the service of a German widow named Funkel, who lived in a villa near Surbiton. Devout as Mr. Ablethorpe, this good woman had taken an idea of bringing the Orrins to more settled ways.
Aphra was to be cook and housekeeper, Honorine sewing maid, Camilla waited at table, and Sidonia became laundress. It was a hospitable and kindly arrangement. But the operations of Jeremy, who had charge of the small garden, brought all the dogs of the neighbourhood there to scratch, while within doors the entire service of the household would be interrupted by discussions as to what the exact meaning of a pinch of salt spilled on the right side of the salt cellar, or a tug of war between the younger sisters to decide who was to clean the knives.
As all had foreseen but herself, Madame Funkel had to call in the police before she could get rid of her troop of domestics. It ended in their retreat, after certain threats on Aphra's part—threats which, but for the opportune vanishing of Jeremy, might not have ended pleasantly for their ex-mistress.
Aphra returned to her diminished shoe shop, this time set up in a suburb of Leeds, and Jeremy was next heard of as the companion of Mr. Hobby Stennis in the little wayside cottage where he lived before moving into the larger and more retired Deep Moat Grange.