After breakfast next morning, Sidwell found her friend sitting with a book beneath one of the great trees of the garden.  At that moment Sylvia was overcome with laughter, evidently occasioned by her reading.

‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, ’if this man isn’t a great humorist!  I don’t think I ever read anything more irresistible.’

The book was Hugh Miller’s Testimony of the Rocks, a richly bound copy belonging to Mrs. Warricombe.

’I daresay you know it very well; it’s the chapter in which he discusses, with perfect gravity, whether it would have been possible for Noah to collect examples of all living creatures in the ark.  He decides that it wouldn’t—­that the deluge must have spared a portion of the earth; but the details of his argument are delicious, especially this place where he says that all the insects could have been brought together only “at enormous expense of miracle”!  I suspected a secret smile; but no—­that’s out of the question.  “At enormous expense of miracle"!’

Sylvia’s eyes winked as she laughed, a peculiarity which enhanced the charm of her frank mirth.  Her dark, pure complexion, strongly-marked eyebrows, subtle lips, were shadowed beneath a great garden hat, and a loose white gown, with no oppressive moulding at the waist, made her a refreshing picture in the glare of mid-summer.

‘The phrase is ridiculous enough,’ assented Sidwell.  ’Miracle can be but miracle, however great or small its extent.’

’Isn’t it strange, reading a book of this kind nowadays?  What a leap we have made!  I should think there’s hardly a country curate who would be capable of bringing this argument into a sermon.’

‘I don’t know,’ returned Sidwell, smiling.  ’One still hears remarkable sermons.’

‘What will Mr. Peak’s be like?’

They exchanged glances.  Sylvia wore a look of reflective curiosity, and her friend answered with some hesitation, as if the thought were new to her: 

‘They won’t deal with Noah, we may take that for granted.’

‘Most likely not with miracles, however little expensive.’

’Perhaps not.  I suppose he will deal chiefly with the moral teaching of Christianity.’

‘Do you think him strong as a moralist?’ inquired Sylvia.

’He has very decided opinions about the present state of our civilisation.’

‘So I find.  But is there any distinctly moral force in him?’

‘Father thinks so,’ Sidwell replied, ’and so do our friends the Lilywhites.’

Miss Moorhouse pondered awhile.

‘He is a great problem to me,’ she declared at length, knitting her brows with a hint of humorous exaggeration.  ’I wonder whether he believes in the dogmas of Christianity.’

Sidwell was startled.

‘Would he think of becoming a clergyman?’

’Oh, why not?  Don’t they recognise nowadays that the spirit is enough?’

There was silence.  Sidwell let her eyes wander over the sunny grass to the red-flowering creeper on the nearest side of the house.