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Updated: June 4, 2025
When their plans came to disaster, as often happened by reason of the boldness of Scott's young conceptions, Catie took the disappointment with the temper of a little vixen, kicked against the pricks and openly defied the Powers that Be. Scott, on the other hand, shut his teeth and accepted the penalty, already intent upon the question as to what he should undertake another time.
And, in that one sentence, Catie showed the practical maturity of her grasp on life and on Scott Brenton. Half way to the distant schoolhouse, she spoke again, this time more tactfully. "Never mind the spat, Scott. That's over and done with, even if you were horrid," she told him. "But really, now we're growing up, we ought to think things over and decide things."
And go her ways the little damsel did, with only her guardian angel to see to it that her way was not the wrong one. By the time her father's first week's rent was due, Catie had made acquaintance with every inhabitant of the village, from the Methodist minister down to the blacksmith's bob-tailed cat.
There was no mistaking the resonant purpose in his voice. Recognizing it, his mother yielded to it of necessity. As quietly as possible, she accepted the choice that he had made, and then she went away to her own room. A half-hour later, kneeling beside her bed, she lost herself in supplication on behalf of those who bow the knee to Baal. In the fulness of time, Scott married Catie.
What shall I call you?" he inquired, with masculine and dazed bluntness. "Catia. It is ever so much prettier; Catie is so babyish," she urged him. "But, if it is your name?" he urged in return. Her retort came with unexpected pith and promptness. Moreover, it struck home. "So is the Baptist your church," she answered pertly. "I guess I have a right to change, as well as you." Mrs.
Scott Brenton found that fact out to his cost, when the story of his camp and his subsequent spanking came back upon him by way of the man that sold the hens' eggs, in retaliation for his refusal to ask that he himself and Catie should be allowed to have a ride in the egg-man's wagon.
To his slowly-developing masculine mind, it never had occurred that he and Catie could not go on for ever, just chums and playmates and, now and then, lusty foes, without complicating their relations by more formal, final ties. He rallied swiftly, however. "Well, you'll have to marry a minister, then," he told her sturdily. Her nose wrinkled in disgust.
He, the priest, vowed, despite his honest doubts, to the preaching of God's holy word and commandment, to be applying questions such as that to the marriage ties between himself and Catie! For, quite unconsciously, the swift revulsion flung him back upon the use of the old, almost forgotten name. No marriage, honestly entered into, honestly lived out, could be a machine-wrought manacle.
Catie might be but six years and nine months old; but already her infant brain had fathomed the theory of effectual relation between the crime and the punishment. Her ideal Gehenna would be made up of countless little assorted hells, not of one vast and indiscriminate lake of flaming brimstone. Perchance this very fact had its own due share of influence upon the later theology of Scott Brenton.
For some reason he would have been loath to analyze, even to himself, it was to Catie that Scott first announced his change of plan. Catie took the announcement tranquilly. To her mind, religion was something that one put on, together with one's Sunday hat. There was no reason one of them should be unchanging in form more than the other.
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