I agreed to do so. Uncle asked him some question bearing upon his business in Toronto. I was glad of this as it prevented any question being fired at me as to my afternoon’s doings, and I could use my brain planning how to keep such a question from being asked. I determined to get Mr. Bang and Uncle talking and to keep them talking. So when a pause came, I asked Uncle, “What is a Puritan?” little dreaming of what a flood-gate I would turn loose.
“A Puritan! Who has been calling you a Puritan?” demanded Uncle.
I was just going to reply that I had heard of one girl at Mrs. Lien’s ball speaking of another as a Puritan, and wished to know exactly what was meant. All this, of course, would have been half lies—for I was the girl—but I must lie it seems as things are going. Mr. Bang saved the necessity.
“Now-a-days a Puritan is considered as an overly good person whom in business dealings, it is necessary to watch,” he growled.
Uncle smiled and agreed.
“The Puritans most famous in our history are those who settled in New England in the early 17th century as you know———” he began.
“They were a bad lot,” cut in J. B., “far from what their name would imply, so you see to be called a Puritan now can hardly be accepted as a term of respect.”
“Were they very bad?” I asked, inwardly rejoicing at the success of my strategy.
“Their chief recreation was hanging Quakers, Episcopalians, and Papists; they, together with the descendants of twenty thousand odd convicts, and other scum that England had dumped into the New World. Such were the ‘Fathers of the Revolution’ in the great Republic.”
“Twenty thousand convicts is not many in a big nation,” Mumsie suggested. She always wants to bolster up any bad case.