His cheerfulness held the group with their passions arrested.  Nicky-Nan turned about and stared at the placard as Lippity-Libby smoothed it over the paste, whistling.

At that moment Un’ Benny Rowett, hands in trouser-pockets, came dandering along.  He, too, taking the geniality of every one for granted, halted, spread his legs wide and conned the announcement.

“Oh!” said he after a pause, wheeling about.  “Still harpin’ on they Germans?  Well, Mr Hambly, sir, I don’t know how it strikes you, but I’m sick an’ tired of them dismal blackguards.”

“I can’t bear it,” said Mrs Steele, walking to and fro in her drawing-room.  She ceased wringing her handkerchief, and came to a halt confronting the Vicar, who stood moodily leaning an arm on the mantelshelf.

“I believe,” he answered after a pause, “you would find it worse to bear in a month or so if I hadn’t offered.”

“Why didn’t you consult me?”

“I wrote to the Bishop—­”

“The ‘Bishop!’ Well . . . what did he advise?”

“Oh, of course he temporised. . . .  Yes, I know what you are going to say.  My consulting him was a momentary throw-back of loyalty.  The official Churches—­Roman Catholic, Greek, Anglican, the so-called Free—­are alike out of it in this business.  Men in England, France, Russia—­Germany and Austria, too—­are up against something that really matters.”

“What can matter comparable with the saving of a soul?”

“Losing it, sweetheart; or, better still, forgetting it—­just seeing your job and sticking it out.  It is a long, long way to Tipperary, every Tommy knows; and what (bless him!) he neither knows nor recks about is its being a short cut to Heaven.”

“Robert, will you tell me that our Faith is going down in this horrible business?”

“Certainly not, my dear.  But I seem to see that the Churches are going down.  After all, every Church—­even the Church Catholic—­is a means to an end, not an end in itself.  Where I’ve differed from four out of five of my clerical brethren (oh, drat the professional lingo!)—­from the majority of the clergy hereabouts, is that while they look on the Church and its formularies as something even more sacred than the Cross itself, I have believed in it as the most effective instrument for teaching the Cross.”  Mr Steele pulled a wry mouth.  “At this moment I seem to be the bigger fool.  They may be right:  the Church may be worth a disinterested idolatry:  but as a means to teach mankind the lesson of Christ it has rather patently failed to do its business.  Men are not fools:  or rather they are fools, but not fools enough in the long-run to pay for being taught to be foolish.  They pay us ministers of religion, Agatha, a tidy lot of money, if you take all Europe over:  and we are not delivering the goods.  In their present frame of mind they will soon be discovering that, for any use we are, they had better have saved the cash and put it into heavy artillery.”