r. He'll be where he ought to be, Nollie, where the Church
is, and the Churchmen are not--in the air!"

"Don't!" cried Noel passionately.

"No, no, I'm not chaffing. There's no room on earth for saints in
authority. There's use for a saintly symbol, even if one doesn't hold
with it, but there's no mortal use for those who try to have things both
ways--to be saints and seers of visions, and yet to come the practical
and worldly and rule ordinary men's lives. Saintly example yes; but not
saintly governance. You've been his deliverance, Nollie."

"But Daddy loves his Church."

George frowned. "Of course, it'll be a wrench. A man's bound to have a
cosey feeling about a place where he's been boss so long; and there is
something about a Church--the drone, the scent, the half darkness;
there's beauty in it, it's a pleasant drug. But he's not being asked to
give up the drug habit; only to stop administering drugs to others.
Don't worry, Nollie; I don't believe that's ever suited him, it wants a
thicker skin than he's got."

"But all the people he helps?"

"No reason he shouldn't go on helping people, is there?"

"But to go on living there, without--Mother died there, you know!"

George grunted. "Dreams, Nollie, all round him; of the past and the
future, of what people are and what he can do with them. I never see him
without a skirmish, as you know, and yet I'm fond of him. But I should
be twice as fond, and half as likely to skirmish, if he'd drop the habits
of authority. Then I believe he'd have some real influence over me;
there's something beautiful about him, I know that quite well."

"Yes," murmured Noel fervently.

"He's such a queer mixture," mused George. "Clean out of his age; chalks
above most of the parsons in a spiritual sense and chalks below most of
them in the worldly. And yet I believe he's in the right of it. The
Church ought to be a forlorn hope, Nollie; then we should believe in it.
Instead of that, it's a sort of business that no one can take too
seriously. You see, the Church spiritual can't make good in this
age--has no chance of making good, and so in the main it's given it up
for vested interests and social influence. Your father is a symbol of
what the Church is not. But what about you, my dear? There's a room at
my boarding-house, and only one old lady besides myself, who knits all
the time. If Grace can get shifted we'll find a house, and you can have
the baby. They'll