"
There is a point beyond which it is not safe to prod Josephine, and I
could see from the expression of her eye that we had reached it on this
occasion. She drew herself up and answered haughtily:
"I have heard you make that insinuation several times before, Fred. It
is not merely silly, it is disgraceful. I keep you from church? Don't
you know," she exclaimed, with a quaver of emotion, "that your refusal to
go is a source of genuine grief to me, and that I just hate to go alone?
Don't you know that I should like nothing better than to go with you
every Sunday, and that I am ready to go to any church you will select?"
"Yes," I answered, doggedly, "I am well aware that you would prefer to
have me become anything rather than remain--er--a steadfast worshipper of
nature."
Josephine made a little gesture of impatience such as my well-born
apotheosis of nature is apt to evoke. For a few moments she looked as
though she were going to cry; then, with an almost passionate outburst,
she exclaimed:
"You will promise me, Fred, won't you, that when the children are old
enough to understand what it means not to go to church you will go too?"
Now, it may be that my response at the time to this pathetic appeal was
not altogether satisfactory to my darling; but she has forgotten her
fears and her tears to-day in the happy consciousness that as surely as
the bells begin to ring on Sunday morning I begin to brush my silk hat
with the feverish impatience of an abandoned church-goer.
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