“Lest you should convert me.”
I was silent from sheer surprise.
“You see what a dangerous person she thinks you!” said Millicent, laughing.
“I don’t see why she should,” I replied, rather nettled. “I never tried to convert her.”
“Perhaps because you felt it was a hopeless case,” said Millicent, who could not apparently see the thing in a serious light; for she was laughing still, and looked altogether highly amused.
“I don’t know whether I felt about it one way or the other,” I said. “I am utterly bewildered that Sybil should have laid hold of the idea of my being so dangerous in that line; from the moment I discovered what her notions on religion were I avoided even touching on the subject directly or indirectly, and yet she looks upon me as a lion or a fox going about and seeking whom I may devour!”
“No, no; you must not think that,” protested Millicent. “She looks upon you as dangerous, but in quite another sense from proselytizing. She suspects me—very unjustly, I assure you—of having what she calls Roman Catholic proclivities; and when I expressed a wish to know you—she raves about you in the most enthusiastic way—she said nothing would induce her to make us acquainted; that you were just the kind of person to whisk me into the Catholic Church before I knew where I was.”
There was something at once so absurd and so thoroughly characteristic of Sybil in this remark that, in spite of myself, I burst out laughing.
“I promise solemnly,” I said, “that I will not whisk you in without giving you due warning, and, moreover, having your full and free consent to the operation beforehand.”
“Thank you. That is generous,” said Millicent; “and to prove my sense of it I solemnly promise not to whisk you into my church without having your full and free consent beforehand.”