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.