Uncle Henry found it hard to dispose of words like these when he deplored his nephew’s collapse into ritualism.

“You really needn’t bother about the incense and the vestments,” Mark assured him.  “I like incense and vestments; but I don’t think they’re the most important things in religion.  You couldn’t find anybody more evangelical than Mr. Ogilvie, though he doesn’t call himself evangelical, or his party the Evangelical party.  It’s no use your trying to argue me out of what I believe.  I know I’m believing what it’s right for me to believe.  When I’m older I shall try to make everybody else believe in my way, because I should like everybody else to feel as happy as I do.  Your religion doesn’t make you feel happy, Uncle Henry!”

“Leave the room,” was Mr. Lidderdale’s reply.  “I won’t stand this kind of talk from a boy of your age.”

Although Mark had only claimed from his uncle the right to believe what it was right for him to believe, the richness of his belief presently began to seem too much for one.  His nature was generous in everything, and he felt that he must share this happiness with somebody else.  He regretted the death of poor Mr. Spaull, for he was sure that he could have persuaded poor Mr. Spaull to cut off his yellow moustache and become a Catholic.  Mr. Palmer was of course hopeless:  Saint Augustine of Hippo, St. Paul himself even, would have found it hard to deal with Mr. Palmer; as for the new master, Mr. Blumey, with his long nose and long chin and long frock coat and long boots, he was obviously absorbed by the problems of mathematics and required nothing more.

Term came to an end, and during the holidays Mark was able to spend most of his time at Meade Cantorum.  He had always been a favourite of Mrs. Ogilvie since that Whit-sunday nearly two months ago when she saw him looking at her garden and invited him in, and every time he revisited the Vicarage he had devoted some of his time to helping her weed or prune or do whatever she wanted to do in her garden.  He was also on friendly terms with Miriam, the elder of Mr. Ogilvie’s two sisters, who was very like her brother in appearance and who gave to the house the decorous loving care he gave to the church.  And however enthralling her domestic ministrations, she had always time to attend every service; while, so well ordered was her manner of life, her religious duties never involved the household in discomfort.  She never gave the impression that so many religious women give of going to church in a fever of self-gratification, to which everything and everybody around her must be subordinated.  The practice of her religion was woven into her life like the strand of wool on which all the others depend, but which itself is no more conspicuous than any of the other strands.  With so many women religion is a substitute for something else; with Miriam Ogilvie everything else was made as nearly and as beautifully as it could be made a