Part 6 (1/2)
”I'm sure I don't know,” Eurie said, unaccustomed to being put through a course of logic. ”Only, you know, I suppose he simply means that it is beyond their comprehensions.”
”They must have remarkably limited comprehensions then if they are incapable of understanding so simple a figure of speech, as that there are two ways to go, and one is harder and safer than the other. I understood it when it was sung to me--and I was a very little child--and believed it, too, until I saw the lives of people contradict it; but if I believed, it still I would not make public sport of it.”
At this point Ruth leaned forward from the seat behind and whispered:
”Girls, do keep still; you are drawing the attention of all the people around you and disturbing everybody.”
After that they kept still; but the good doctor had effectually sealed one heart to whatever that was tender and earnest he might have to say.
She sat erect, with scornful eyes and glowing cheeks, and when the first flush of excitement pa.s.sed off was simply harder and gayer than before.
Who imagined such a result as that? n.o.body, of course. But how perfectly foolish and illogical! Couldn't she see that Dr. Eggleston only meant to refer to the fact that literature, both of prose and poetry, had been improved by being brought to the level of childish minds, and to reprove that way of teaching religious truth, that leaves a somber, dismal impression on youthful hearts? Apparently she could not, since she did not. As for being absurd and illogical, I _did_ not say that she wasn't.
I am simply giving you facts as they occurred. I think myself that she was dishonoring the memory of her father ten thousand times more than any chance and unmeant word of the speakers could possibly have done.
The only trouble was, that she was such an idiot she did not see it; and she prided herself on her powers of reasoning, too! But the world is full of idiots. She sat like a stone during the rest of the brilliant lecture. Many things she heard because she could not help hearing; many she admired, because it was in her to admire a brilliant and charming thing, and she could not help that, either; but she could shut her _heart_ to all tenderness of feeling and all softening influences, and that she did with much satisfaction, deliberately steeling herself against the words of a man because he had quoted a chance line that her father used to sing, while she lived every day of her life in defiance of the principles by which her father shaped his life and his death!
Verily, the ways of girls are beyond understanding.
Eurie enjoyed it all. When Dr. Eggleston told of the men that, as soon as their children grew a little too restless, had business down town, she clapped her hands softly and whispered:
”That is for all the world like father. Neddie and Puss were never in a whining fit in their lives that father didn't at once think of a patient he had neglected to visit that day, and rush off.”
She laughed over the thought that women were shut in with little steam engines, and said:
”That's a capital name for them; we have three at home that are always just at the very point of explosion. I mean to write to mother and tell her I have found a new name for them.”
When he suggested the blunt-end scissors, and the colored crayons with which they could make wonderful yellow dogs, with green tails and blue eyes, her delight became so great that she looked around to Ruth to help her enjoy it, and said:
”You see if I don't invest in a ton of colored crayons the very first thing I do when I get home; it is just capital! So strange I never thought of it before.”
”You did not think of it now,” Ruth said, in her quiet cooling way.
”Give the speaker credit for his own ideas, please. Half the world have to do the thinking for the other half always.”
”That is the reason so much is left undone, then,” retorted Eurie, with unfailing good humor, and turned back to the speaker in time to hear his description of the superintendent that was so long in finding the place to sing that the boys before him went around the world while he was giving the number.
”Slow people,” said she, going down the hill afterward. ”I never could endure them, and I shall have less patience with them in future than ever. Wasn't he splendid? Ruth, you liked the part about d.i.c.kens, of course.”
”A valuable help the lecture will be to your after-life if all you have got is an added feeling of impatience toward slow people. Unfortunately for you they are in the world, and will be very likely to stay in it, and a very good sort of people they are, too.”
It was Marion who said this, and her tone was dry and unsympathetic.
Eurie turned to her curiously.
”You didn't like him,” she said, ”did you? I am so surprised; I thought you would think him splendid. On your favorite hobby, too. I said to myself this will be just in Marion's line. She has so much to say about teaching children by rote in a dull and uninteresting way. You couldn't forgive him for reciting that horrid old hymn in such a funny way.
Flossy, do you suppose you can ever hear that hymn read again without laughing? What was the matter, Marion? Who imagined you had any sentimental drawings toward Watts' hymns?”
”I didn't even know it was Watts' hymn,” Marion said, indifferently.
”But I hate to hear any one go back on his own belief. If he honestly believes in the sentiments of that verse, and they certainly are Bible sentiments, he shouldn't make fun of it. But I'm sure it is of no consequence to me. He may make fun of the whole Bible if he chooses, verse by verse, and preach a melting sermon from it the very next Sabbath; it will be all the same to me. Let us go in search of some dinner, and not talk any more about him.”
”But that isn't fair. You are unjust, isn't she, Ruth? I say he didn't make fun of religion, as Marion persists in saying that he did.”