“I don’t believe mother really was as much shocked as she appeared to be,” said Eleanor.  “At any rate, the thing that had struck us—­you and me—­was that Mr. Hodder looked as though he could say something helpful, if he only would.  And then I went to see him afterwards, in the parish house—­you remember?—­after we had been reading modern criticism together, and he told me that the faith which had come down from the fathers was like an egg?  It couldn’t be chipped.  I was awfully disappointed—­and yet I couldn’t help liking him, he was so honest.  And the theological books he gave me to read—­which were so mediaeval and absurd!  Well, he has come around to our point of view.  He told me so himself.”

“But what is our point of view, Nell?” her husband asked, with a smile.  “Isn’t it a good deal like Professor Bridges’, only we’re not quite so learned?  We’re just ordinary heathens, as far as I can make out.  If Hodder has our point of view, he ought to go into the law or a trust company.”

“Oh, Phil!” she protested, “and you’re on the vestry!  I do believe in Something, and so do you.”

“Something,” he observed, “is hardly a concrete and complete theology.”

“Why do you make me laugh,” she reproached him, “when the matter is so serious?  What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m sure Mr. Hodder has worked it out.  He’s too sincere to remain in the Church and not have something constructive and satisfying.  I’ve always said that he seemed to have a truth shut up inside of him which he could not communicate.  Well, now he looks as though he were about to communicate it, as though he had discovered it.  I suppose you think me silly, but you’ll grant, whatever Mr. Hodder may be, he isn’t silly.  And women can feel these things.  You know I’m not given to sentimentality, but I was never so impressed by the growth in any personality as I was this morning by his.  He seems to have become himself, as I always imagined him.  And, Phil, he was so fine!  He’s absolutely incapable of posing, as you’ll admit, and he stood right up and acknowledged that he’d been wrong in our argument.  He hasn’t had the services all summer, and when he resumes them next Sunday I gathered that he intends to make his new position clear.”

Mr. Goodrich thrust his hands in his pockets and gave a low whistle.

“I guess I won’t go shooting Saturday, after all,” he declared.  “I wouldn’t miss Hodder’s sermon for all the quail in Harrington County.”

“It’s high time you did go to church,” remarked Eleanor, contemplating, not without pride, her husband’s close-cropped, pugnacious head.

Your judgments are pretty sound, Nell.  I’ll do you that credit.  And I’ve always owned up that Hodder would be a fighter if he ever got started.  It’s written all over him.  What’s more, I’ve a notion that some of our friends are already a little suspicious of him.”

“You mean Mr. Parr?” she asked, anxiously.