Back and forth the discussion raged, Mr. Hunter appealing to Jean for confirmation of his contentions, Mrs. Hunter relying on Mrs. Daquin for aid and succour. On only one point could they agree and that was Carl’s essential difference from other children. Not until Mrs. Daquin, in her desire to help Mrs. Hunter and thereby gain her favour, introduced the matter of religion did Carl Hunter’s name cease being bandied back and forth like a tennis ball between his parents.
Mrs. Hunter, tired of the argument over her son, swooped down upon the new topic with avidity. It was wholly a verbal swoop. It was difficult to imagine one of Mrs. Hunter’s proportions and dignity swooping in any other manner.
“I knew there was something I intended asking you and I almost forgot it. What church’re you planning to attend?”
“Well—er—that’s a problem we haven’t met yet,” Mrs. Daquin, somewhat flustered, replied. “You see, in Chicago I was a Baptist—and you know the Baptist saying, ‘Baptist born and Baptist bred, be a Baptist till I’m dead,’ ” she somewhat incorrectly quoted. “But my husband and his daughter, they’re Catholics—”
“Oh, indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Hunter, her eyebrows making a rapid ascent until they seemed to mingle with the hairs that straggled down from beneath her elaborate coiffure. Mrs. Hunter’s ears were not so keen as Mrs. Plummer’s—the news regarding the religious beliefs of the Daquins had not reached her. Now she uttered the exclamation as though Mrs. Daquin had said: “My husband and his daughter have leprosy!” or “They suffer from epileptic fits.”
Mrs. Daquin unmistakably caught the implication—she flushed and twisted the handkerchief in her hands and laughed a silly, titterish and mirthless laugh. Mrs. Hunter turned and surveyed Jean and Mimi as though they were specimens of some new flora or fauna of a weird and unfamiliar species. Her inspection lasted but a minute but it was long enough to make Mimi squirm uncomfortably and she felt vaguely as though she had been caught in the act of doing some loathsome and criminal thing.
They did not pursue the subject. Mrs. Hunter rose soon afterwards, her husband following her lead.
“My dear, on Tuesday of next week I’m entertaining my club, the Fleur-de-Lis—Mr. Hunter calls it ‘the eating brigade’ but that’s because he’s jealous, we don’t let any men attend our affairs except once a year. You must come, for there you’ll meet the right people—it’s fatal to get mixed up with the wrong crowd,” she smilingly warned.
Mrs. Daquin eagerly accepted the invitation, too eagerly Mimi thought. As she bade the Hunters a formal goodbye, she was thinking to herself: “Why can’t she accept the attentions of Mrs. Hunter as though she were used to decent society instead of fawning all over herself?”
After the Hunters had left, there was a silence which was unbroken until they sat at supper. Mrs. Daquin several times looked inquiringly at Jean as though she were about to speak but each time desisted. Mimi noticed the words shut off as they were about to be said but knew the flood would not be long in coming. She was right.
“What are you and Mimi going to do about attending church, Jean?” began Mrs. Daquin. “There’s no coloured Catholic church here and you saw from Mrs. Hunter’s manner that—er—well, we aren’t going to get along as well here as we might if—” The abrupt ending of her uncompleted sentence and the eloquent silence which followed it were sufficient.
“You mean you think we should give up our religion to make money and get into ‘society’?” queried Jean in astonishment, his last word tinged ever so slightly with irony.
“Well, I don’t mean exactly that,” his wife answered. “But you can’t attend a white Catholic church here and I just thought you might—well, you might refrain from mentioning you’re a Catholic, for you can see from the way Mrs. Hunter acted it puts you in a different—er—it makes you different from the others,” she ended lamely.
“What if it does make us different?” Jean demanded, almost belligerently. “Coloured people here, from what I’ve seen, are always talking about ‘prejudice’ and they’re just about as full of prejudice against Catholics, Jews and black Negroes as white people themselves. You can do what you want, Mary, but Mimi and I will stick to our own religion. And I’m sure we can attend some Catholic church here, so that’s an end to that.”
There was no mistaking the tone. Being a wise woman, Mrs. Daquin dropped the subject. Afterwards, Mimi hugged Jean in the hallway.
“You were gorgeous, papa Jean. That’s one time you bearded the lioness. And if you did it oftener—there’d be fewer times you’d have to do it.” Jean grinned at her happily, proud of her approval.
IV
“I meant to tell you on Sunday,” telephoned Mrs. Hunter the latter part of the week, “to bring your lovely little girl with you to my party next Tuesday. Mrs. Adams is bringing her girl, Hilda, and the two of them can play together.”
And so it was that Mimi, dressed in her best dress, a pale yellow confection of lawn, set out with Mrs. Daquin for Mrs. Hunter’s house and the Fleur-de-Lis Club meeting. Mrs. Daquin, too, dressed carefully and elaborately. She spent an hour arranging her hair in the style of the day, brushed back from the forehead high over a “rat” that made her head appear as though soldiers had thrown up breastworks, carefully smoothed over. From behind this amazing rampart peeped coyly a lacy hat perched perilously on the back of the head. Mrs. Daquin’s modified leg-o’-mutton sleeves, her lightly fitting waist with high neck supported by whalebone stays, her long skirt flaring wide and with a train were all of the latest design, as were the half-mittens of black lace from which Mrs. Daquin’s fingers, short and round, emerged shyly like little fat sausages. She knew her sex—she would be on inspection and much
