nd 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.

"No, Wallis Plimpton."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, with disdain in her voice.

"Mr. Parr only got back yesterday, and Wallis told me that Hodder had
refused to go on a yachting trip with him. Not only foolishness, but
high treason." Phil smiled. "Plimpton's the weather-vane, the barometer
of that crowd--he feels a disturbance long before it turns up--he's as
sensitive as the stock market."

"He is the stock market," said Eleanor.

"It's been my opinion," Phil went on reflectively, "that they've all had
just a trace of uneasiness about Hodder all along, an idea that Nelson
Langmaid slipped up for the first time in his life when he got him to
come. Oh, the feeling's been dormant, but it existed. And they've been
just a little afraid that they couldn't handle him if the time ever
came. He's not their type. When I saw Plimpton at the Country Club the
other day he wondered, in that genial, off-hand manner of his, whether
Hodder would continue to be satisfied with St. John's. Plimpton said he
might be offered a missionary diocese. Oh we'll have a fine old row."

"I believe," said Eleanor, "that that's the only thing that interests
you."

"Well, it does please me," he admitted, "when I think of Gordon Atterbury
and Everett Constable and a few others,--Eldon Parr,--who believe that
religion ought to be kept archaic and innocuous, served in a form that
won't bother anybody. By the way, Nell, do you remember the verse the
Professor quoted about the Pharisees, and cleansing the outside of the
cup and platter?"

"Yes," she answered, "why?"

"Well--Hodder didn't give you any intimation as to what he intended to
do about that sort of thing, did he?"

"What sort of thing?"

"About the inside of Eldon Parr's cup,--so to speak. And the inside of
Wallis Plimpton's cup, and Everett Constable's cup, and Ferguson's cup,
and Lang