While rejoicing and thanking God for the change, which she felt was wholly sincere, Mrs. Markham had deeply deplored the pertinacity with which Andy had clung to his resolve to join "Mr. Townsend's church or none." She did not doubt Mr. Townsend's piety or Andy's either, but she doubted the Episcopalians generally because they did not require more than God himself requires, and it hurt her sore that Andy should go with them rather than to her church across the brook, where Father Aberdeen preached every Sunday against the pride, and pomp, and worldliness generally of his Episcopal brethren. Andy believed in Mr. Townsend, and in time he came to believe heart and soul in the church doctrines as taught by him, and the beautiful consistency of his daily life was to his mother like a constant and powerful argument in favor of the church to which he belonged, while to his brothers it was a powerful argument in favor of the religion he professed.
That Andy Markham was a Christian no one doubted. It showed itself in every act of his life; it shone in his beaming, good-natured face, and made itself heard in the touching pathos of his voice, when he repeated aloud in his room the prayers of his church, saying to his mother, when she objected that his prayers were made up beforehand: "And for the land's sake, ain't the sams and hims, which are nothing but prayers set to music, made up beforehand? A pretty muss you'd have of it if everybody should strike out for himself, a singin' his own words just as they popped into his head."
Mrs. Markham was not convinced, but she let Andy alone after that, simply remarking that "the prayer-book would not always answer the purpose; there would come a time when just what he wanted was not there."
Andy was willing to wait till that time came, trusting to Mr. Townsend to find for him some way of escape; and so the matter dropped, and he was free to read his prayers as much as he pleased. He had heard from Richard that his new sister was of his way of thinking--that though not a member of the church except by baptism, she was an Episcopalian, and would be married by that form.
It was strange how Andy's great, warm heart went out toward Ethelyn after that. He was sure to like her; and on the evening of the bridal, when the clock struck nine, he had taken his tallow candle to his room, and opening his prayer-book at the marriage ceremony, had read it carefully through, even to the saying: "I, Richard, take thee, Ethelyn," etc., kneeling at the proper time, and after he was through even venturing to improvise a prayer of his own, in which he asked, not that Ethelyn might be happy with his brother--there was no doubt on that point, for Richard was perfect in his estimation--but that "old Dick" might be happy with her--that he, Andy, might do his whole duty by her, and that, if it was right to ask it, she might bring him something from that famous Boston, which seemed to him like a kind of paradise, and also that she need not at once discover that he did not know as much as "old Dick."