"By the way," I said, "who is Carpy? She comes into my letter too."

The Canon did not know and seemed uninterested in the point. He went on
reading:

"Another day he committed an unforgivable offence. He said to us, 'You
must stand up when quoting the words of the Bible.'"

"Isn't that always considered essential?" I asked. "The unforgivable
offence," said the Canon, "is in the next sentence."

"But _he_ sat with his feet on the fender, the pig. I do hate that
sort. Even when Hilda said that Ananias told a lie and was turned into
a pillar of salt he did not laugh. He said he'd turn one girl out of the
room to-day for nothing but dropping her pen."

"The Archdeacon," I said, "could of course sympathize with that curate."

"It wasn't that which made him really angry," said the Canon, "although
he didn't like it."

"There must be something pretty bad coming, if it's worse than that."

The Canon sighed heavily and went on reading

"Hilda taught me the two-step at rec. Another girl (also in my class and
jolly nice) played them."

The Canon looked up with a puzzled expression. I explained as well as I
could.

"The two-step," I said, "is a dance. What the jolly, nice girl played
is a little obscure, but I think it must have been tunes suitable to the
performance of the two-step. 'Rec.' is a shortened form of recreation.
Lalage is fond of these contractions. She writes to me about her comp."

The canon read: "On the other days, the old Pet takes us herself at
Scrip: We were at Genesis, and she read out, 'In the beginning God
created the heaven, and the earth.' 'But of course you all know He
didn't. Modern science teaches us----' Then she went on with a lot of
rot about gases and forces and nebulous things."

"The Archdeacon," said the Canon, "is going to write to the Archbishop
of Dublin about it. He says that kind of teaching ought not to be
allowed."

"We must head him off somehow," I said, "if he really means it. But he
hardly can. I don't expect he'll run into extremes. He certainly
won't without taking advice. The Archdeacon isn't a man to do anything
definite in a hurry. He's told me over and over again that he deprecates
precipitancy of action."

"He feels very strongly about the Higher Criticism. Very strongly
indeed. He says it's poisoning the wells of religion in the home."

"Last time he lunched with us he said it was sapping the foundations.
Still I scarcely think he'll want to institute a heres