'Go to bed, Lance,' he said; 'if you have not learnt your lessons in proper time, you must wake early, or take the consequences. I won't have it done on Sunday night.'
Lance started round angrily, and Cherry cried, 'O Felix, it is no such thing! Only would you tell us where to find about the king and his priests that defeated the enemy by singing the "mercy endureth for ever" psalm?'
'In the Bible!' said Felix, as if sure it was a blunder. 'There's no such story.'
'Indeed there is,' cried Lance, 'for Papa (the word low and reverently) took out his blue poly-something Bible and read it out in the sermon. Don't you remember, Fee, a hot day in the summer, when he preached all about those wild robbers--horrid fellows with long spears--coming up in the desert to make a regular smash of the Jews?'
'Well, he did not say that, of course, but they wanted to; and how the king sent out the priests without a fighting man, only all in white, praising God in the beauty of holiness, and singing, "His mercy endureth for ever." I saw him read that, though he told us all the rest without book; how all the enemy began to quarrel, and all killed one another, and the Jews had nothing to do but to pick up the spoil, and sing another psalm coming back.'
'I remember now,' said Felix, in a very different tone. 'It was Jehoshaphat, Lancey boy. I'll find it for you in the book of Chronicles. Did you want it for anything?'
'It was to show poor Fernando Travis, wasn't it?' said Cherry; and as Lance wriggled again, she added, 'He seems to have been taught nothing good.'
'Now, Cherry,' broke out Lance, 'I told you to say not a word.'
'I know a little about it, Lance,' said Felix, sitting down on the window-seat and lifting Lance on his knee, as he said, in a tone very unlike his intended expostulation, 'You must not let him do you harm, Lance.'
'He wouldn't; but he does not know anything about anything,' said the little boy. 'They never taught him to say his prayers, nor sing hymns, nor chant, and he thinks it is only good for niggers. So I told him that singing psalms once beat an army, and he laughed; and I thought Cherry was sure to know where it was--but girls will always tell.'
'Indeed you never told me not,' said Cherry, humbly.