His anger, sometimes roused, had a terrible moral quality that never failed to thrill her, and the Loyal Legion button on his black frock coat seemed to her an epitome of his character.  He sat for the most part silent, his remarkable, penetrating eyes, lighting under his grizzled brows, smiling at her, at the children, at the grandchildren.  And sometimes he would go to the corner table, where the four littlest sat, and fetch one back to perch on his knee and pull at his white, military mustache.

It was the children’s day.  Uproar greeted the huge white cylinder of ice-cream borne by Katie, the senior of the elderly maids; uproar greeted the cake; and finally there was a rush for the chocolates, little tablets wrapped in tinfoil and tied with red and blue ribbon.  After that, the pandemonium left the dining-room, to spread itself over the spacious house from the basement to the great playroom in the attic, where the dolls and blocks and hobby-horses of the parental generation stoically awaited the new.

Sometimes a visitor was admitted to this sacramental feat, the dearest old gentleman in the world, with a great, high bridged nose, a slight stoop, a kindling look, and snow white hair, though the top of his head was bald.  He sat on Mrs. Waring’s right, and was treated with the greatest deference by the elders, and with none at all by the children, who besieged him.  The bigger ones knew that he had had what is called a history; that he had been rich once, with a great mansion of his own, but now he lived on Dalton Street, almost in the slums, and worked among the poor.  His name was Mr. Bentley.

He was not there on the particular Sunday when this story opens, otherwise the conversation about to be recorded would not have taken place.  For St. John’s Church was not often mentioned in Mr. Bentley’s presence.

“Well, grandmother,” said Phil Goodrich, who was the favourite son-in-law, “how was the new rector to-day?”

“Mr. Hodder is a remarkable young man, Phil,” Mrs. Waring declared, “and delivered such a good sermon.  I couldn’t help wishing that you and Rex and Evelyn and George had been in church.”

“Phil couldn’t go,” explained the unmarried and sunburned Evelyn, “he had a match on of eighteen holes with me.”

Mrs. Waring sighed.

“I can’t think what’s got into the younger people these days that they seem so indifferent to religion.  Your father’s a vestryman, Phil, and I believe it has always been his hope that you would succeed him.  I’m afraid Rex won’t succeed his father,” she added, with a touch of regret and a glance of pride at her husband.  “You never go to church, Rex.  Phil does.”

“I got enough church at boarding-school to last me a lifetime, mother,” her son replied.  He was slightly older than Evelyn, and just out of college.  “Besides, any heathen can get on the vestry—­it’s a financial board, and they’re due to put Phil on some day.  They’re always putting him on boards.”