This is Francesca's theory as stated to the Reverend Ronald, who was holding an umbrella over her ungrateful head at the time; and she went on to boast of a convention she once attended in California, where twenty-six thousand Christian Endeavourers were unable to dim the American sunshine, though they stayed ten days.
"Our first duty, both to ourselves and to the community," I continued to Salemina, "is to learn how there can be three distinct kinds of proper Presbyterianism.

Perhaps it would be a graceful act on our part if we should each espouse a different kind; then there would be no feeling among our Edinburgh friends.

And again what is this 'union' of which we hear murmurs?
Is it religious or political?
Is it an echo of the 1707 Union you explained to us last week, or is it a new one?
What is Disestablishment?
What is Disruption?
Are they the same thing?
What is the Sustentation Fund?
What was the Non-Intrusion party?
What was the Dundas Despotism?
What is the argument at present going on about taking the Shorter Catechism out of the schools?
What is the Shorter Catechism, any way,--or at least what have they left out of the Longer Catechism to make it shorter,--and is the length of the Catechism one of the points of difference?
then when we have looked up Chalmers and Candlish, we can ask the ex-Moderator and the Professor of Biblical Criticism to tea; separately, of course, lest there should be ecclesiastical quarrels." Salemina and Francesca both incline to the Established church, I lean instinctively toward the Free; but that does not mean that we have any knowledge of the differences that separate them.

Salemina is a conservative in all things; she loves law, order, historic associations, old customs; and so when there is a regularly established national church,--or, for that matter, a regularly established anything, she gravitates to it by the law of her being.

Francesca's religious convictions, when she is away from her own minister and native land, are inclined to be flexible.