And it is
true, you'll admit, of some of those pious women, though I withdraw it
about Sister Agatha."
"Of course I couldn't be a sister like Sister Agatha," said Dot,
"without being a Catholic as well; but I might be a nurse at one of the
ordinary hospitals."
"It would be dreadfully hard work!" said Esther.
"Harder than being a man, do you think?" asked Dot, laughing.
"For goodness' sake, don't turn Catholic!" said Esther, in some alarm.
"_That_ would break father's heart, if you like."
A horror of Catholicism ran in the very marrow of these young people.
It was one of the few relics of their father's Puritanism surviving in
them. Of "Catholics" they had been accustomed to speak since childhood
as of nightmares and Red Indians with bloody scalps at their waists; and
perhaps that instinctive terror of the subtle heart of Rome is the
religious prejudice which we will do well to part with last.
Dot had not, indeed, contemplated an apostacy so unnatural; but beneath
these comparatively trivial words there was an ever-growing impulse to
fulfil that old longing of her nature to do something, as the Christians
would say, "for God," something serious, in return for the solemn and
beautiful gift of life.
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