His mother looked a little distressed.

"Rex, I wish you wouldn't talk that way about the Church--"

"I'm sorry, mother," he said, with quick penitence. "Mr. Langmaid's a
vestryman, you know, and they've only got him there because he's the best
corporation lawyer in the city. He isn't exactly what you'd call
orthodox. He never goes."

"We are indebted to Mr. Langmaid for Mr. Hodder." This was one of Mr.
Waring's rare remarks.

Eleanor Goodrich caught her husband's eye, and smiled.

"I wonder why it is," she said, "that we are so luke-warm about church in
these days? I don't mean you, Lucy, or Laureston," she added to her
sister, Mrs. Grey. "You're both exemplary." Lucy bowed ironically.
"But most people of our ages with whom we associate. Martha Preston, for
instance. We were all brought up like the children of Jonathan Edwards.
Do you remember that awful round-and-round feeling on Sunday afternoons,
Sally, and only the wabbly Noah's Ark elephant to play with, right in
this house? instead of THAT!" There was a bump in the hall without, and
shrieks of laughter. "I'll never forget the first time it occurred to
me--when I was reading Darwin--that if the ark were as large as Barnum's
Circus and the Natural History Museum put together, it couldn't have held
a thousandth of the species on earth. It was a blow."

"I don't know what we're coming to," exclaimed Mrs. Waring gently.

"I didn't mean to be flippant, mother," said Eleanor penitently, "but I
do believe the Christian religion has got to be presented in a different
way, and a more vital way, to appeal to a new generation. I am merely
looking facts in the face."

"What is the Christian religion?" asked Sally's husband, George Bridges,
who held a chair of history in the local flourishing university. "I've
been trying to find out all my life."

"You couldn't be expected to know, George," said his wife. "You were
brought up an Unitarian, and went to Harvard."

"Never mind, professor," said Phil Goodrich, in a quizzical, affectionate
tone. "Take the floor and tell us what it isn't."

George Bridges smiled. He was a striking contrast in type to his
square-cut and vigorous brother-in-law; very thin, with slightly
protruding eyes the color of the faded blue glaze of ancient pottery, and
yet humorous.

"I've had my chance, at any rate. Sally made me go last Sunday and hear
Mr. Hodder."

"I can't see why you didn't like him, George," Lucy cried. "I think he's
sple