"What is the good of faculties and appeals?" she demanded. "They always confuse the real issue. Kensit knocks the nail on the head anyway. It's not a case of legal or illegal ornaments; it's a case of Rome. Do they take us all for fools? Church after church has begun that way, and ended with Mass and the confessional!"
"Mr. Duncan," observed Mr. Kestern mildly, "is entirely against all that. This is a mistake, of course, but he seems to me a sincere, earnest evangelical at bottom."
"Then what," continued Miss Bishop decisively, "has he to do with a cross and candlesticks? It's all very well, Vicar, but that's the thin end of the wedge. You know it as well as I do. His work is the saving of souls, and that sort of thing never saved a soul yet. Is that not so?"
"I'm afraid you're only too right," admitted Mr. Kestern. "It's a great pity--a great pity."
"A pity! I should call it something worse than that," retorted the lady.
Paul's mind was busy. He was recalling the chapel at St. Mary's in the early mornings, and the remote, austere, moving little service enacted there on Sundays before a cross and candlesticks. For the life of him he had to say something.
"Miss Bishop," he said, "do you think, nowadays, a cross always leads to Rome? There is one on the Table at St. Mary's."
"And how much Gospel have you heard preached there?" she demanded, shrewdly.
"Yes, Paul, that's the test," said his father.
The boy hesitated. Then he equivocated. "But the cross is the sign of our faith," he said.
"Is it?" Miss Bishop was emphatic. "I do not know that it is--not, at any rate, in the sense people use the phrase. 'Christ is Risen': that's Christianity."
"The empty cross symbolises that," said Paul.
"Then put a cross on the steeple, in the porch, over the pulpit even. Why on the Table? You know as well as I do that the thing is Pre-Reformation, Roman usage."
"But not early enough. Did Paul have a cross in the catacombs?"
Miss Bishop uttered an indignant exclamation. "Not of that sort," she said.
Mr. Kestern linked his arm in Paul's. "The lad doesn't mean to defend Ritualism," he said kindly. "I know my boy too well. Keep to the Word of God, Paul, and you won't go wrong."
Mr. Kestern pressed his arm. "That will do, Paul," he said. "I want to ask our friend something. The theatre service for the last night of the year is definitely settled, Miss Bishop; will you say a few words?"