Such a moral condition is evil's opportunity when
a disposition towards penitence or reform is either absent or
resisted. The thought, therefore, of her father's drunkenness that
day, and of herself as the immediate cause, made her so wretched and
reckless that she tried to forget her miserable self in excitement,
as he had in lethargy. Even her mother chided her, asking if she
did not "remember the day."
"Indeed, I shall have occasion to remember it," was her ambiguous
answer; "but Mondays in the country are always blue, and I'll do
my repenting then. If I were a good Catholic I'd hunt up a priest
to-morrow."
"I'll be your father-confessor to-day," said a black-eyed young
man, twirling his mustache.
"You, Mr. Sibely? You would lead me into more naughtiness than you
would help me out of, twice over. For my confessor I would choose
an ancient man who had had his dinner. What a comfortable belief
it is, to be sure! All one has to do is to buzz one's sins through
a grating (that is like an indefinite number of key-holes) to
a dozing old gentleman inside, and then away with a heart like a
feather, to load up again. I'd bless the man who could convert me
to a Papist.
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