"Oh! yes, he is!" said Uncle George, "that's the way the Catholics go on in their churches, and I suppose that Fred must have seen it somewhere."
"Catholics!" ejaculated Aunt Pilcher, in a tone of horror, and half looking over her shoulder as if some ghost of one might come in at the sound of the word. "Ye don't mean them papists and other Jesuits that call themselves Catholics! It's enough to make a body hate the name."
"That won't do, you know, sister Pilcher," said Uncle George, "because it is in the Apostles' Creed."
"I know it," returned Aunt Pilcher, "but I'd like to know what the Holy Catholic Church in the Apostles' Creed has got to do with them ignorant idolaters, the Catholics, the Roman papists, I mean?"
"It's the same name, that's all," said Uncle George, with a sly twinkle in his eye; "and they say it's the same thing."
"Which in course is nonsense!" ejaculated my aunt.
"Oh! of course it is," rejoined Uncle George. "We are the real and true Catholic Church, and if some one wanted to come to our true and real Holy Catholic Church we would just tell him to ask for the Catholic church and anybody would show him."
"Well, they ort to, that's all I got to say," said Aunt Pilcher doubtfully.
"Certainly," continued Uncle George, "and I've no doubt now, sister Pilcher, that if you were to go out and ask people in the street here to point you to a Catholic church that they would show you our Protestant churches directly."
Aunt Pilcher looked very hard at Uncle George, as if she feared he might be making game of her; but he looked so solemn and sedate that she didn't suspect, but I did, and I got a crick in the back of my neck trying to keep from laughing. She seemed to think that she was bantered by my uncle, and said: