His mother looked a little distressed.

“Rex, I wish you wouldn’t talk that way about the Church—­”

“I’m sorry, mother,” he said, with quick penitence.  “Mr. Langmaid’s a vestryman, you know, and they’ve only got him there because he’s the best corporation lawyer in the city.  He isn’t exactly what you’d call orthodox.  He never goes.”

“We are indebted to Mr. Langmaid for Mr. Hodder.”  This was one of Mr. Waring’s rare remarks.

Eleanor Goodrich caught her husband’s eye, and smiled.

“I wonder why it is,” she said, “that we are so luke-warm about church in these days?  I don’t mean you, Lucy, or Laureston,” she added to her sister, Mrs. Grey.  “You’re both exemplary.”  Lucy bowed ironically.  “But most people of our ages with whom we associate.  Martha Preston, for instance.  We were all brought up like the children of Jonathan Edwards.  Do you remember that awful round-and-round feeling on Sunday afternoons, Sally, and only the wabbly Noah’s Ark elephant to play with, right in this house? instead of that!” There was a bump in the hall without, and shrieks of laughter.  “I’ll never forget the first time it occurred to me—­when I was reading Darwin—­that if the ark were as large as Barnum’s Circus and the Natural History Museum put together, it couldn’t have held a thousandth of the species on earth.  It was a blow.”

“I don’t know what we’re coming to,” exclaimed Mrs. Waring gently.

“I didn’t mean to be flippant, mother,” said Eleanor penitently, “but I do believe the Christian religion has got to be presented in a different way, and a more vital way, to appeal to a new generation.  I am merely looking facts in the face.”

“What is the Christian religion?” asked Sally’s husband, George Bridges, who held a chair of history in the local flourishing university.  “I’ve been trying to find out all my life.”

“You couldn’t be expected to know, George,” said his wife.  “You were brought up an Unitarian, and went to Harvard.”

“Never mind, professor,” said Phil Goodrich, in a quizzical, affectionate tone.  “Take the floor and tell us what it isn’t.”

George Bridges smiled.  He was a striking contrast in type to his square-cut and vigorous brother-in-law; very thin, with slightly protruding eyes the color of the faded blue glaze of ancient pottery, and yet humorous.

“I’ve had my chance, at any rate.  Sally made me go last Sunday and hear Mr. Hodder.”

“I can’t see why you didn’t like him, George,” Lucy cried.  “I think he’s splendid.”

“Oh, I like him,” said Mr. Bridges.

“That’s just it!” exclaimed Eleanor.  “I like him.  I think he’s sincere.  And that first Sunday he came, when I saw him get up in the pulpit and wave that long arm of his, all I could think of was a modern Savonarola.  He looks one.  And then, when he began to preach, it was maddening.  I felt all the time that he could say something helpful, if he only would.  But he didn’t.  It was all about the sufficiency of grace,—­whatever that may be.  He didn’t explain it.  He didn’t give me one notion as to how to cope a little better with the frightful complexities of the modern lives we live, or how to stop quarrelling with Phil when he stays at the office and is late for dinner.”