Though it is true Henrietta’s attitude toward life was self-conscious and she dramatized her sins and her virtues, her emotions were far more healthy than those of June. Her mother and two older sisters shared her religious convictions. They went to church together, sang hymns together, visited hospitals, and strove to outdo each other in self-sacrifice to help needy neighbors and friends.
On the other hand, June’s family, although really no more self-centered than Henrietta’s, was entirely worldly.
On three occasions, to June’s remembrance and to her mother’s despair, Mr. Henreddy had brought home friends who needed help—once a broken-down newspaper man, then an actor and his wife, and finally one poor wreck who had just served a few years in the penitentiary (for being a “promoter” June gathered) and kept them for visits of weeks at a time.
Mother Grace, in spite of occasional bitter asides to June that charity began at home and that she was tired of skimping and saving and going without things—always kept her delightful air of pleased hostess.
Mr. Henreddy and Mother Grace had no Christ-like attitude about such things. One came across an old friend, or a friend of an old friend in distress, and it was a matter of course to help him out.
June had little consciousness either of these guests of her parents’ magnanimity. They ate their meals with Mr. Henreddy and Mother Grace and were away all day just as Mr. Henreddy was. They were looking for “openings.”
So naturally June’s religion took a morbid and secretive tinge. Because of it she was scoffed at by her brothers and Adele. Mother Grace had no sympathy with churchgoing, regarding it as an easy way of avoiding the elaborate preparation of the formal Sunday meal, and rather a disagreeable pose on the part of June. Of course it was a pose. June would admit it. But didn’t everyone have poses, and why was one more objectionable than another?
There was another aspect of her religion which June caught a glimpse of once after long and consecutive thought on the subject. She had been reading of early Christian saints and took note of the fact that most of them indulged in trances. Not that she put it that way. It was hours of meditation, fasting, prayer and vigil, on which emphasis was laid, not only in the lives of the saints, but in the exhortations of á Kempis, and Wesley. And it occurred to June that some English poet had tried to induce the same ecstasy, according to some essay she had read, by sitting on a hilltop and trying either to think of nothing or to concentrate on a bluebell (she could not remember which). But she did remember that the poet quoted Indian philosophers as inspiration to his endeavor. Further reading discovered to her sages sitting on the banks of streams, grass growing from their toes, baked and wedged and stiffened into a perpetual pose, by the sun, the wind and the rain.
(With no early knowledge of Indian philosophers, had not June and Adele tried to outdo each other in seeing who could pray the longest, and had not stubbornness and cramp given way to a drowsy pleasure and feeling of blessedness—which was dispelled when they awoke hours later still and cold?)
It was after long ruminations to the above effect that June, startled, had a sudden thought, as she lay in bed one night.
“It’s all because we are too small to know how to be happy. Some people take whiskey to be happy—father usually has the smell of it about him, and then there are Mother Grace’s highballs when she’s feeling low. It’s because they want to escape from reality. Religion, or whiskey, or dope …
“I suppose I’m always worrying about my unhappiness because I’m introspective.” (It was a new word to June and she liked it.) “To be happy you’ve got to be retrospective and quit worrying about your relation to things.
“Somehow, I believe that Fabre is happy.” With this sudden leap from the general to the specific, she fell asleep.
And then, with the coming of Henrietta, she forgot about her conclusions, and religion became more of a pose than ever.
That Sunday afternoon, by the time the dishes were washed and dried and put away, and Adele had brushed out the dining-room to equalize her share of the work with that of June who had the pots and pans to wash and dry, June was looking forward with pleasurable anticipation to her Sunday religious letter to Henrietta which the two girls had pledged themselves to write.
She had forgotten about Adele and her accusations and smooth sounding phrases were rolling in the mind when Adele burst out.
“I don’t care, I want some fudge! Mother Grace always makes the Sunday desserts for father, regardless of what we like, so I don’t see why we can’t make fudge.”
“If we ask her, she’ll just say no. She can’t say yes in front of father. He’d just begin to talk about pampering.”
June finished the last pan and stood considering. Fudge was extremely desirable that stormy afternoon.
“There’s two doors in between the kitchen and the library, so I don’t see how she can smell it,” she declared. “Let’s make it anyway!”
With great daring, they started to make the candy, extravagantly using two cups of sugar. This was one of the periods of skimp and save in the Henreddy household. After it had boiled for a few minutes, and the smell began to permeate the house and fill the girls with apprehension, Mother Grace came out, clad in the loose, yet tidy negligee which she affected around the house, and asked them coldly what they were doing. She seemed, on Sundays and the mornings Mr. Henreddy was home, infected by his formal attitude towards his offspring; or perhaps she was afraid of incurring his wrath against her and them, by her usual
