He shook his head. “’Twould spoil it.”

He looked at his niece and smiled as he asked:  “Katie dear, are you becoming world weary?” Katie, very smart that night in white gown and black hat, appealed to him as distinctly humorous in the role of world weariness.

“No,” returned Katie, “not world weary; just weary of not knowing the world.”

Afterward in his room they chatted cheerfully of many things:  family affairs, army and church affairs.  Katie strove to keep to them as merely personal matters.

But there were no merely personal matters any more.  All the little things were paths to the big things.  There was no way of keeping herself detached.  Even the seemingly isolated topic of the recent illness of the Bishop’s wife led full upon the picture of other people she had been seeing that summer who looked ill.

Her uncle was telling of a case he had recently disposed of, a rector of his diocese who was guilty of an atheistic book.  He spoke feelingly of what he called the shallowness of rationalism, of the dangers of the age, beautifully of that splendid past which the church must conserve.  He told of some lectures he himself was to deliver on the fallacies of socialism.  “It’s honeycombing our churches, Katherine—­yes, and even the army.  Darrett tells me they’ve found it’s spreading among the men.  Nice state of affairs were we to have any sort of industrial war!”

It was hard for Katie to keep silence, but she felt so sadly the lack of assurance arising from lack of knowledge.  Well, give her a little time, she would fix that!

She contented herself with asking if he anticipated an industrial war.

The Bishop made a large gesture and said he hoped not, but he felt it a time for the church to throw all her forces to safeguarding the great heritage of the country’s institutions.  He especially deplored that the church itself did not see it more clearly, more unitedly.  He mentioned fellow bishops who seemed to be actually encouraging inroads upon tradition.  Where did they expect it to lead?—­he demanded.

“Perhaps,” meekly suggested Katie, “they expect it to lead to growth.”

“Growth!” snorted the Bishop.  “Destruction!”

They passed to the sunnier subject of raising money.  As regards the budget, Bishop Wayneworth was the church’s most valued servant.  His manner of good-humored tolerance gave Mammon a soothing sense of being understood, moving the much maligned god to reach for its check book, just to bear the friendly bishop out in his lenient interpretation of a certain text about service rendered in two directions.

He was telling of a fund he expected to raise at a given time.  If he did, a certain capitalist would duplicate it.  The Bishop became jubilant at the prospect.