“Perhaps you are right,” Adele said.

She could not speak further of the opera which seemed awkwardly out of place in the light of what Winifred had said.  After a pause she said: 

“I’m afraid we are all hypocrites more or less, but it is a wonder we had not thought of it before.  But, do you know, I’ve sometimes thought it rather queer that Mr. Francis should sing in our choir?  He is a confessed infidel.  I do not believe our rector knows it.  I do not think he would allow it.  Mr. Francis just drifted into the choir when we needed a basso very much.  But, when you think of it, isn’t it blasphemy to take the name of the Lord, whom he professes not to believe in, so solemnly upon his lips in church?”

Winifred consented that so it seemed to her.

Then a sudden recollection amused Miss Forrester.  “Speaking of worshipers,” she said, “now there is my precious Cousin Dick.  How do you think he occupied himself in the midst of Morning Prayer a couple of Sundays ago?  The rogue!  I certainly was keeping the run of the service, but it was edifying to see his head bowed so devoutly until he passed a slip of paper over to me.  What do you think was on it?  Not a suddenly inspired hymn, but some doggerel lines about

  “’A certain young woman
  Who sang high soprano.’

“I looked daggers at him, but of course he saw I wanted to laugh.  Then he looked such a picture of rapt piety!  Oh, he is a case!” And Adele gave way to the laughter she had smothered in church.

Winifred smiled, too, as she thought of the irrepressibly merry youth.  But her pleasure was not as unmixed as it would have been three days before.  Henceforth, any jest to be quite enjoyed must be free from taint of irreverence toward holy things.  She had “begun to know God,” and the knowledge gave a sensitiveness to the honor of His name and the things of His house.

Adele recovered from her mirth and resumed the subject seriously.

“I am afraid we are sorry worshipers, when you come to look at it,” she said.  “If our office is really such a sacred one—­and I see it must be, if we take it seriously—­why, then, we ought to be pretty good people; earnest, and reverent, and all that, I mean.  But it doesn’t seem to be our distinguishing trait,” and she smiled.  “Not mine, at least.  I ought not to generalize too much.  I am sure there are persons in our choirs who live beautiful, devoted lives; but the lot I fraternize with mostly are not likely to go to the stake just yet for their piety.  What awfully jolly dances the Emmanuel church choir gave last winter!  I was invited two or three times and went.  But you know it has struck me once or twice as a little odd that we church singers, as such, should go into that sort of thing.  If some of us should stray into it individually it’s nothing remarkable, I suppose.  But isn’t it a bit queer that, as a company, we should lead off in those things?  I suppose,” with a twinkle of malicious enjoyment in her eyes, “our Emmanuel church neighbors could not find vent for their joy in the Lord in Hosannas on Sunday, and had to work it off at their heels on week days.”