Yet his children, in a modified Episcopalian form, were being taught
the same thing: the Mosaic God; Christ Jesus who took unto Himself the
sin of the world; the rugged disciple, St. Peter and the loving
disciple, St. John. The sky, they learned, was the habitation of light-
winged angels. The ark was still reported on its memorable voyage, with
its providential pairs of animals gathered from every zone, but there
was a growing reticence about Jonah. The persistence of such credulity,
Lee thought, was depressing; just as the churches, leaning on the
broken support of a charity they were held to dispense, were a
commentary on the poverty of the minds and spirits of men.
Yes, the necessity of charging Helena and Gregory with such assurances,
their rigid bending into mental forms, large and small, in which he had
no confidence, put Lee outside the solidity of his family. In the
instruction, the influences, widely held paramount in the welding of
polite Christian characters, Fanny was indefatigable--the piece of
silver firmly clasped in the hand for collection, the courtesy when
addressed by elders, the convention that nature, birds, were
sentimentally beneficent. When Gregory brought out these convictions,
lessons, in his indescribably fresh eager tones, Lee listened with a
helpless disapproval.
Everything, it seemed to Lee Randon, increased the position of self-
delusion at the expense of what he felt to be reality.
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