"What a splendid specimen of Anglo-Catholic faith is Mr Swallowlies!" exclaimed Araminta in a tone of rapture; "and how free from bigotry in his reverence for a Romish saint like the holy Toper!" "Hold your silly tongue, this moment!" I exclaimed, getting into a passion--"a fellow that believes in paralytic cats and five-footed calves being cured by such trumpery, should leave our church." "You are so bitter, Mr Buddle, against the Holy Catholic Church, that I wonder you call yourself a Christian at all." "Where is the Holy Catholic Church, you little simpleton?" I said, softening a little, for Araminta is a nice little girl. "At Rome, Charles Fustian told me; and we are but a distant branch of it, bearing very little fruit, and owing that little only to the sap furnished to us by the main old trunk. And Mr Mount Huxtable says the same,--only that our branch bears no fruit, as the continuity was cut off at the deplorable Reformation." "Charles Fustian! Mr Mount Huxtable!" I cried: "they're laughing at you, my little dear: they are both ministers of our church, and have made numberless protestations against the wickedness and errors of Rome. They are laughing at you,--at least I know Mount Huxtable is, for, to tell you a secret, my dear Araminta, he is placed here for no other purpose but to defend our Protestant Establishment against the Tractarian tendencies of the artists and young ladies of the day." "Charles Fustian, sir, I beg to tell you, knows too well to presume to laugh at me," said Araminta, tossing her head. "He ought, my dear," I replied, "for he is a remarkably foolish young man, and hasn't half the sense in his whole head which you have in your little finger." By this time we had reached the spring; and after placing the girls in the best seats still to be found, I called Dr Smiler aside. "My dear old friend," I said, "have you made proper inquiry about Mount Huxtable's church principles, before you installed him in full power in the parish?" "No Tractarian need apply, was in the advertisement," replied the Doctor. "He is a stout opponent of the dissenters; and, besides, my dear Buddle, as you are the oldest friend I have in the parish, I may tell you that on the way here he had a long conversation with Christina, who sat beside him in his phaeton, and among other things he asked her if she thought she could be content with the humble condition of a curate's wife? She said yes, of course,--for she has liked him ever since they met; and he told her he would wait on me to-morrow. I now consider him my son-in-law. He has great expectations, and has already fourteen hundred a-year." "I don't like what I hear of his churchmanship," I said. "And as to Swallowlies, I think he is a bigoted fool, and a Papist." "I don't the least see, Mr Buddle, why a man should be either bigoted or a fool who believes as two-thirds of the Christians throughout the world believe."