Again the wicket was shut in his face. Hommels, in the tavern parlour that evening, laughed over it, and said:
“Well, M. le Curé keeps you all in order like a flock of sheep.”
“The stayer wins. We shall see who’ll hold out longest.”
These strained relations between Knoups and the Curé lasted some four or five years, and then another incident occurred.
Hubertienke, Knoups’ eldest girl, was now nine, and went to school at Haffert. The master said that she was one of the cleverest and best-behaved children that had ever come under his care. And now that she went twice a week to M. le Chapelain’s “Christian doctrine” class, it was quite likely that next St Rochus’ Day she would walk with the other children as a “little bride” in the procession, and carry a little flag, a shepherd’s crook, perhaps even a cornucopia, or a great crimson heart with gold flames. The child had talked and dreamed of this possibility for a whole year or so, and Geutruu had had a little white dress and white satin shoes made for her in town, and bought a wreath of May-blossom from the milliner.
But Geutruu and her little daughter had reckoned without their host—that is to say, without the Curé. Two days before St Rochus, his reverence had sent for Vrouw Knoups, and asked her whether Mathis was going to have the dance-music again. Whereupon, embarrassed and confused, she had answered, “I think so, M. le Curé.”
“Then Hubertine can’t walk in the procession,” was the Curé’s verdict. “If the father doesn’t keep his Easter, the child can’t be a ‘little bride.’”
Geutruu came home with the tears in her eyes.
“Bad luck to the whole thing!” raged Mathis. “Geutruu, you dress the child properly, and take her to the church. We’ll see what the Curé does then.”
The wife did as he had said—dressed the child in the white frock, put on the satin shoes, and fastened the wreath into her hair. Then she went with Hubertienke to high mass, and when the procession started Hubertienke took her place with the other children of the “catechising.”
Scarcely however had the procession got out of the church, and reached the market-place, when the Curé entered the ranks of the “little brides,” took Hubertienke by the hand, and made the child take her place behind the file of school children who did not yet come to “Christian doctrine,” and were posted a long way in advance at the head of the procession, in their black or dark blue Sunday frocks.