"Mae," asked Mrs. Jerrold, "Do you have to go to a Roman Catholic Church
to say your prayers?" For Mrs. Jerrold was a Puritan of the Puritans,
and had breathed in the shorter catechism and the doctrine of election
with the mountain air and sea-salt of her childhood. Possibly the two
former had had as much to do as the latter with her angularity and
severe strength.

"Indeed," cried Mae, impulsively, "I wish I could always enter a church
to say my prayers. There is so much to help one there."

"Is there any danger of your becoming a Romanist?" enquired Mrs.
Jerrold, pushing the matter further.

"I wish there were a chance of my becoming anything half as good, but I
am afraid there isn't. Still, I turn with an occasional loyal heart-beat
to the great Mother Church, that the rest of you have all run away
from." "Yes, you have," Mae shook her head decidedly at Edith. "She may
be a cruel mother. I know you all think she's like the old woman
who lived in a shoe, and that she whips her children and sends them
supperless to bed, and gives them a stone for bread, but she's the
mother of all of us, notwithstanding."

"What a dreadful mixture of Mother Goose and Holy Bible," exclaimed
Eric, laughingly, while Mae cooled off, and Mrs. Jerrold stared
amazedly, wondering how to take this tirade. She concluded at last that
it would be better to let it pass as one of Mae's extravagances, so she
ended the conversation by saying: "I hope, Eric, you will wait for your
sister, if you see her alone, at church. It is not the thing for her to
go by herself."