“All the young are alike, so I needn’t grumble at my own family for that matter,” confessed Mr. Best.  “Their generation is all equally headstrong and opinionated—­high and low, the same.  If I’ve hinted to Raymond Ironsyde once, I’ve hinted a thousand times, that he’s not going about his business in a proper spirit.”

“He is at present obviously in love, John, and must not therefore be judged.  But I share your uneasiness.”

“It’s wrong, and he knows it, and she ought to know it, too.  Sabina, I mean.  I should have given her credit for more sense myself.  I thought she had plenty of self-respect and brains too.”

“Things are coming to a crisis in that quarter,” prophesied Ernest.  “It is a quality of love that it doesn’t stand still, John; and something is going to happen very shortly.  Either it will be given out that they are betrothed, or else the thing will fade away.  Sabina has very fine instincts; and on his side, he would, I am sure, do nothing unbecoming his family.”

“He has—­plenty,” declared Mr. Best.

“Nothing about which there would not be two opinions, believe me.  The fact that he has let it go so far makes me think they are engaged.  The young will go their own way about things.”

“If it was all right, Sabina Dinnett wouldn’t be so miserable,” argued John Best.  “She was used to be as cheerful as a bird on a bough; and now she is not.”

“Merely showing that the climax is at hand.  I have seen myself lately that Sabina was unhappy and even taxed her with it; but she denied it.  Her mother, however, knows that she is a good deal perturbed.  We must hope for the best.”

“And what is the best?” asked John.

“There is not the slightest difficulty about that; the best is what will happen,” replied Mr. Churchouse.  “As a good Christian you know it perfectly well.”

But the other shook his head.

“That won’t do,” he answered, “that’s only evasion, Mister Ernest.  There’s lots and lots of things happen, and the better the Christian you are, the better you know they ought not to happen.  And whether they are engaged to be married, or whether they quarrel, trouble must come of it.  If people do wrong, it’s no good for Christians to say the issue must be right.  That’s simply weak-minded.  You might as well argue nothing wrong ever does happen, since nothing can happen without the will of God.”

“In a sense that’s true,” admitted Ernest.  “So true, in fact, that we’d better change the subject, John.  We thinking and religious men know there’s a good deal of thin ice in Christianity, where we’ve got to walk with caution and not venture without a guide.  One needs professional theologians to skate over these dangerous places safely.  But, for my part, I have my reason well under control, as every religious person should.  I can perfectly accept the fact that evil happens, and yet that nothing happens without the sanction of an all powerful and all good God.”