CHRISTMAS TIME.
merry Christmas, Miss Cossart! Why, you don’t mean to say you are not coming to church! I thought you’d be sure to make a fresh start on Christmas Day!”
“Oh, I’m a regular heathen! I haven’t been to church twice the whole year! I can’t stand stuffy places, and I expect the scent of the flowers will make it twice as bad as usual to-day.”
“Well, you’re coming anyway, Miss Cholmondeley? Shall we start? It’ll be hot walking, and I hate that omnibus, and the carros are so slow. Come along. Miss Cossart will tell them that we’ve started.”
Sheila hung back a moment; she had an instinct that her aunt would be vexed, but she never knew how to refuse Ronald’s suggestions, made in a half masterful, half-pleading way. He took her prayer-book and walked off beside her, whilst Effie looked after them with a rather stormy light in her eyes.
“Does she really never come to church?” asked Ronald, as they took their way along the sunny road together.
“She has only been once or twice since I have known her,” answered Sheila. “She thinks the air might bring on asthma.”
Ronald was silent for a few minutes, swinging his stick. His face was rather graver than its wont.
“Somehow I don’t like to see people staying away from church like that. I know it isn’t fashionable to say such things, but I have a feeling that church is the place to help us to get the better of our infirmities, bodily and spiritual. My brother Guy will struggle out to church when he goes nowhere else, and I’m sure he is never the worse for it. I don’t like to hear a girl call herself a heathen in that flippant way. She must remember she won’t be judged by the standard of the heathens!”