dn't got faith," answered Uncle William.

Philip accepted the explanation. If God had not cured him, it was because
he did not really believe. And yet he did not see how he could believe
more than he did. But perhaps he had not given God enough time. He had
only asked Him for nineteen days. In a day or two he began his prayer
again, and this time he fixed upon Easter. That was the day of His Son's
glorious resurrection, and God in His happiness might be mercifully
inclined. But now Philip added other means of attaining his desire: he
began to wish, when he saw a new moon or a dappled horse, and he looked
out for shooting stars; during exeat they had a chicken at the vicarage,
and he broke the lucky bone with Aunt Louisa and wished again, each time
that his foot might be made whole. He was appealing unconsciously to gods
older to his race than the God of Israel. And he bombarded the Almighty
with his prayer, at odd times of the day, whenever it occurred to him, in
identical words always, for it seemed to him important to make his request
in the same terms. But presently the feeling came to him that this time
also his faith would not be great enough. He could not resist the doubt
that assailed him. He made his own experience into a general rule.

"I suppose no one ever has faith enough," he said.

It was like the salt which his nurse used to tell him about: you could
catch any bird by putting salt on his tail; and once he had taken a little
bag of it into Kensington Gardens. But he could never get near enough to
put the salt on a bird's tail. Before Easter he had given up the struggle.
He felt a dull resentment against his uncle for taking him in. The text
which spoke of the moving of mountains was just one of those that said one
thing and meant another. He thought his uncle had been playing a practical
joke on him.

XV

The King's School at Tercanbury, to which Philip went when he was
thirteen, prided itself on its antiquity. It traced its origin to an abbey
school, founded before the Conquest, where the rudiments of learning were
taught by Augustine monks; and, like many another establishment of this
sort, on the destruction of the monasteries it had been reorganised by the
officers of King Henry VIII and thus acquired its name. Since then,
pursuing its modest course, it had given to the sons of the local gentry
and of the professional people of Kent an education sufficient to their
needs. One or two men of le