“Carefully!” he cried.  “I’ve told you not to drive so fast in this part of town.  I’ve never got used to automobiles,” he remarked to Hodder, “and I formerly went to church in the street-cars, but the distances have grown so great—­and I have occasionally been annoyed in them.”

Hodder was not given to trite acquiescence.  His homely composure belied the alertness of his faculties; he was striving to adapt himself to the sudden broadening and quickening of the stream of his life, and he felt a certain excitement—­although he did not betray it—­in the presence of the financier.  Much as he resented the thought, it was impossible for him not to realize that the man’s pleasure and displeasure were important; for, since his arrival, he had had delicate reminders of this from many sources.  Recurrently, it had caused him a vague uneasiness, hinted at a problem new to him.  He was jealous of the dignity of the Church, and he seemed already to have detected in Mr. Parr’s manner a subtle note of patronage.  Nor could Hodder’s years of provincialism permit him to forget that this man with whom he was about to enter into personal relations was a capitalist of national importance.

The neighbourhood they traversed was characteristic of our rapidly expanding American cities.  There were rows of dwelling houses, once ultra-respectable, now slatternly, and lawns gone grey; some of these houses had been remodelled into third-rate shops, or thrown together to make manufacturing establishments:  saloons occupied all the favourable corners.  Flaming posters on vacant lots announced, pictorially, dubious attractions at the theatres.  It was a wonderful Indian summer day, the sunlight soft and melting; and the smoke which continually harassed this district had lifted a little, as though in deference to the Sabbath.

Hodder read the sign on a lamp post, Dalton Street.  The name clung in his memory.

“We thought, some twenty years ago, of moving the church westward,” said Mr. Parr, “but finally agreed to remain where we were.”

The rector had a conviction on this point, and did not hesitate to state it without waiting to be enlightened as to the banker’s views.

“It would seem to me a wise decision,” he said, looking out of the window, and wholly absorbed in the contemplation of the evidences of misery and vice, “with this poverty at the very doors of the church.”

Something in his voice impelled Eldon Parr to shoot a glance at his profile.

“Poverty is inevitable, Mr. Hodder,” he declared.  “The weak always sink.”

Hodder’s reply, whatever it might have been, was prevented by the sudden and unceremonious flight of both occupants toward the ceiling of the limousine, caused by a deep pit in the asphalt.

“What are you doing, Gratton?” Mr. Parr called sharply through the tube.