One summer morning, Mr. Yorke appeared at the breakfast-table with a very sour face. He was bilious, and he had not slept well. Even Hester's cooing ways failed to mollify him.
"Why, you are feverish, papa," she said. "Your hand is hot and dry."
He moved his chair impatiently. "Yes, your mother insisted on my taking charcoal instead of calomel, and I think she must have slily administered a lucifer-match with it: I radiate heat."
Mrs. Yorke took these complaints very quietly. She knew that nothing could be further from her husband's heart than to be dissatisfied with anything she did. "We were disturbed by that fearful noise," she said quietly, taking her place at the table.
Owen began to laugh. The Seaton "cast-iron band" had been out the night before, and the young man found himself very much amused by it.
"Do you like lawlessness, sir?" demanded Mr. Yorke.
"That depends on what the law is," the son replied pleasantly.
"Well, sir, in this case it is the law of common decency, of respect for the clergy, and courtesy to strangers. Father Rasle, the Catholic priest, came here yesterday, and that Babel of cow-bells, and sleigh-bells, and mill-saws, and tin trumpets, and wooden drums, and I know not what else, was before his door. I call it a shameful outrage."
"So do I," Owen replied promptly. "I had no idea what it meant."
The young ladies all exclaimed indignantly; but Edith dropped her eyes and was silent. Theology was nothing to her, and as yet her faith had no life in it. She was deeply ashamed of that religion which all seemed to scoff at save those who tolerated it for her sake. Only her promise held her to it. That the voice of the people is not always, is very seldom, the voice of God, she could not be expected to know; neither could she be expected to love that church which as yet she had heard spoken of only by its enemies. She did not dream of forsaking the religion of her mother; but her constancy to it seemed to her of the same nature as Mrs. Rowan's constancy to her drunken husband.