are too many as it is!  Besides, there is something rather terrible to me about the affection of a dog—­it’s so unreasonable a devotion, and I like more critical affections—­I prefer to earn affection!  I read somewhere the other day,” he went on, “that it might easily be argued that the dog was a higher flight of nature even than man; that man has gone ahead in mind and inventiveness; but that the dog is on the whole the better Christian, because he does by instinct what man fails to do by intention—­he is so sympathetic, so unresentful, so trustful!  It is really amazing, if you come to think of it, the dog’s power of attachment to another species.  We must seem very mysterious to dogs, and yet they never question our right to use them as we will, while nothing shakes their love.  And then there is something wonderful in the way in which the dog, however old he is, always wants to play.  Most animals part with that after their first youth; but a dog plays, partly for the fun of it, and partly to make sure that you like his company and are happy.  And yet it is a little undignified to care for people like that, you know!”

“How ought one to care for people?” I said.

“Ah, that’s a large question,” said Father Payne, “the duty of loving—­it’s a contradiction in terms!  To love people seems the one thing in the world you cannot do because you ought to do it; and yet to love your neighbour as yourself can’t only mean to behave as if you loved him.  And then, what does caring about people mean?  It seems impossible to say.  It isn’t that you want anything which they can give you—­it isn’t that they need anything you can give them; it isn’t always even that you want to see them.  There are people for whom I care who rather bore me; there are people who care for me who bore me to extinction; and again there are people whose company I like for whom I don’t care.  It isn’t always by any means that I admire the people for whom I care.  I see their faults, I don’t want to resemble them.  Then, too, there have been people for whom I have cared very much, and wanted to please, who have not cared in the least for me.  Some of the best-loved people in the world seem to have had very little love to give away!  I have a sort of feeling that the people who evoke most affection are the people who have something of the child always in them—­something petulant, wilful, self-absorbed, claiming sympathy and attention.  It is a certain innocence and freshness that we love, I think; the quality that seems to say, ‘Oh, do make me happy’; and I think that caring for people generally means just that you would like to make them happy, or that they have it in their power to make you happy.  I think it is a kind of conspiracy to be happy together, if possible.  Probably the mistake we make is to think it is one definite thing, when a good many things go to make it up.  I have been interested in a very large number of people—­in fact, I am generally interested in people; but I haven’t