"She won't go--you may depend on that!" he said; "She's had too much
of parsons as it is. Why Mrs. Fred--that's her American aunt--was
regular pestered with 'em coming beggin' of her for their churches
and their windows and their schools and their infants and their
poor, lame, blind, sick of all sorts, as well as for theirselves.
D'rectly they knew she was a millionaire lady' they 'adn't got but
one thought--how to get some of the millions out of her. There was
three secretaries kept when we was in London, and they'd hardly time
for bite nor sup with all the work they 'ad, refusin' scores of
churches and religious folks all together. Miss Maryllia's got a
complete scare o' parsons. Whenever she see a shovel-hat coming she
just flew! When she was in Paris it was the Catholics as wanted
money--nuns, sisters of the poor, priests as 'ad been turned out by
the Government,--and what not,--and out in America it was the
Christian Scientists all the time with such a lot of tickets for
lectures and fal-lals as you never saw,--then came the
Spiritooalists with their seeances; and altogether the Vancourt
family got to look on all sorts of religions merely as so many kinds
of beggin' boxes which if you dropped money into, you went straight
to the Holy-holies, and if you didn't you dropped down into the
great big D's. No!--I don't think anyone need expect to see my lady
at church--it's the last place she'd ever think of going to!"
This piece of information was received by his hearers with profound
gravity. No one spoke, and during the uncomfortable pause Bennett
gave a careless 'Good-night!'--and took his departure.
"Things is come to a pretty pass in this 'ere country," then said
Mr. Netlips grandiosely, "when the woman who is merely the elevation
of the man, exhibits in public a conviction to which her status is
unfitted. If the lady who now possesses the Manor were under the
submission of a husband, he would naturally assume the control which
is govemmentally retaliative and so compel her to include the
religious considerations of the minority in her communicative
system!"
Farmer Thorpe looked impressed, but slightly puzzled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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