superfluous; when, as now, it took the form of inviting
a party of unknown size, under the patronage of Mrs. Mangan, to accept
the Ownashee as its washpot, and (as it were) to cast forth its shoe
over Coppinger's Court, Aunt Freddy may be forgiven the manoeuvre that
arranged a _seance_ with her Dublin dentist for the date decided
upon for the picnic, and may be felt to deserve the sympathy of those
who can appreciate the inwardness of her position. And this last,
improbable though it may seem to some people, was made immensely more
difficult by the simple and irrelevant fact that she, on Sundays,
betook herself to the Knock Ceoil Protestant church, while Larry went
to the white chapel on the hill. It was to the grey, stone Protestant
church that Larry's forbears had gone for one hundred and fifty years
or more, even since the then reigning Coppinger had fallen in love
with an English heiress, and, agreeing with Henri Quatre, that Paris
was well worth a Mass, had 'verted to marry her. Never in living
memory had the congregations that filled full the white chapel on the
hill, included in their dutiful ranks any being of higher degree than
might have been found in those other congregations, that, some
nineteen hundred years earlier, were gathered in the hills of Galilee;
those humble crowds who came to hear Christ preach, of whom it was
said that they were of the common people, and that they heard Him
gladly. Miss Frederica was as good a Christian--in some ways probably
a better one--as might have been found in the white chapel, but it was
impossible for her not to feel, what was, indeed, felt, with a
singular mixture of satisfaction and disapproval, by the majority of
the white chapel's congregation, that Larry's parents had, socially,
been ill-advised when they "made a Roman of him." In the creed of Mary
Twomey, and her fellows, it was only in conformity with natural law in
the spiritual world that ginthry should go to church, and the like of
herself to chapel. She, no more than Frederica, could subdue the
feeling of incongruity imparted by the fact of Master Larry and
herself worshipping together; it was as though, if she had run into
the kitchen to get a sup of hot water, or the wetting of her mouth o'
tay, she had found him sitting among the maids in the servants' hall.
Mary Twomey, and her fellows, would have indignantly repudiated the
idea of taking service with one of their own church. "No! Thank God! I
never sank t