He called himself a Catholic.  He was accustomed to say that Papists required an epithet, they were Roman Catholic; but the Church of England was Catholic in the best, the fullest, and the noblest sense of the term.  He was pleased to think that his shaven face gave him the look of a priest, and in his youth he had possessed an ascetic air which added to the impression.  He often related that on one of his holidays in Boulogne, one of those holidays upon which his wife for economy’s sake did not accompany him, when he was sitting in a church, the cure had come up to him and invited him to preach a sermon.  He dismissed his curates when they married, having decided views on the celibacy of the unbeneficed clergy.  But when at an election the Liberals had written on his garden fence in large blue letters:  This way to Rome, he had been very angry, and threatened to prosecute the leaders of the Liberal party in Blackstable.  He made up his mind now that nothing Josiah Graves said would induce him to remove the candlesticks from the altar, and he muttered Bismarck to himself once or twice irritably.

Suddenly he heard an unexpected noise.  He pulled the handkerchief off his face, got up from the sofa on which he was lying, and went into the dining-room.  Philip was seated on the table with all his bricks around him.  He had built a monstrous castle, and some defect in the foundation had just brought the structure down in noisy ruin.

“What are you doing with those bricks, Philip?  You know you’re not allowed to play games on Sunday.”

Philip stared at him for a moment with frightened eyes, and, as his habit was, flushed deeply.

“I always used to play at home,” he answered.

“I’m sure your dear mamma never allowed you to do such a wicked thing as that.”

Philip did not know it was wicked; but if it was, he did not wish it to be supposed that his mother had consented to it.  He hung his head and did not answer.

“Don’t you know it’s very, very wicked to play on Sunday?  What d’you suppose it’s called the day of rest for?  You’re going to church tonight, and how can you face your Maker when you’ve been breaking one of His laws in the afternoon?”

Mr. Carey told him to put the bricks away at once, and stood over him while Philip did so.

“You’re a very naughty boy,” he repeated.  “Think of the grief you’re causing your poor mother in heaven.”

Philip felt inclined to cry, but he had an instinctive disinclination to letting other people see his tears, and he clenched his teeth to prevent the sobs from escaping.  Mr. Carey sat down in his arm-chair and began to turn over the pages of a book.  Philip stood at the window.  The vicarage was set back from the highroad to Tercanbury, and from the dining-room one saw a semicircular strip of lawn and then as far as the horizon green fields.  Sheep were grazing in them.  The sky was forlorn and gray.  Philip felt infinitely unhappy.