“I ought to have been there myself,” he returned, gravely, “and then I should have known.”
She took his self-reproach literally. “You couldn't have seen me. I was sitting pretty far back, and I went out before any of your family saw me. Don't you go there?”
“Not always, I'm sorry to say. Or, rather, I'm sorry not to be sorry. What church do you generally go to?”
“Oh, I don't know. Sometimes to one, and sometimes to another. Bartley used to report the sermons, and we went round to all the churches then. That is the way I did at home, and it came natural to me. But I don't like it very well. I want Flavia should belong to some particular church.”
“There are enough to choose from,” said Halleck, with pensive sarcasm.
“Yes, that's the difficulty. But I shall make up my mind to one of them, and then I shall always keep to it. What I mean is that I should like to find out where most of the good people belong, and then have her be with them,” pursued Marcia. “I think it's best to belong to some church, don't you?”
There was something so bare, so spiritually poverty-stricken, in these confessions and questions, that Halleck found nothing to say to them. He was troubled, moreover, as to what the truth was in his own mind. He answered, with a sort of mechanical adhesion to the teachings of his youth, “I should be a recreant not to think so. But I'm not sure that I know what you mean by belonging to some church,” he added. “I suppose you would want to believe in the creed of the church, whichever it was.”
“I don't know that I should be particular,” said Marcia, with perfect honesty.
Halleck laughed sadly. “I'm afraid they would, then, unless you joined the Broad Church.”
“What is that?” He explained as well as he could. At the end she repeated, as if she had not followed him very closely: “I should like her to belong to the church where most of the good people went. I think that would be the right one, if you could only find which it is.” Halleck laughed again. “I suppose what I say must sound very queer to you; but I've been thinking a good deal about this lately.”