During the latter part of this discourse Mr. Fellowes had been sorting the books on the small table, and had them now arranged in two separate heaps.

Gwen had been gradually edging her chair near Mrs. Fellowes and her face was alight and eager.

Any new thing is always full of possibilities to a young creature moving out in all directions after experience. Besides, there was an undercurrent of quiet anxious affection running all through her father’s half-incomprehensible speech, that struck her and kept down for the moment her usual defiant attitude of mind when had up before her parents.

Dacre’s reflections, whenever the paternal eye was off him, partook of the most primitive simplicity.

“Thank goodness, I’m out of it. After all, it’s a good thing to be an ass; and the army, oh golly! I never expected anything so sensible as that from ’em.”

With that he winked lugubriously in Gwen’s direction and was rather upset by catching Mr. Fellowes’ eye instead.

“I am quite certain that whatever you and Mrs. Waring have done in this matter has been done most conscientiously,” said Mr. Fellowes discreetly. “I am glad you think me capable of teaching your children, what to my way of thinking is the head and front of all knowledge—the knowledge of God and of His Son, Jesus Christ—”

Gwen looked at Mr. Fellowes with an astonished eager gaze.

“This all sounds quite good,” she reflected, “but then, is it? Things are so very different from sounds,—every tutor before he comes, sounds lovely.”

“But, Mr. Waring,” continued the rector mildly, “if you entrust this matter to me you must also entrust me with the choosing of the books bearing on the subject; for instance, I should decidedly reserve this book, Lord Amberley, also this, Renan’s Life of Jesus, for that future period when you intend to give your children the evidences against Christianity. These, to my mode of thinking, would certainly be valueless for our purpose.”

“Indeed, Mr. Fellowes, you surprise me!”

He went over and glanced in rather a hurt way at the books, “I consider that work of Lord Amberley’s a most unimpassioned, useful, and an eminently trustworthy history of religions. Lord Amberley seems quite of our way of thinking—my wife’s and mine—for though he theorizes so little, confining himself chiefly to the recording of facts, yet in the whole tone of the work, one notices his predilection for that religion instituted by Christ over other faiths. I must say I should have considered that book a valuable one in your cult; however, you are a specialist,” he remarked magnanimously, “we but dabblers in these matters, therefore we are bound to yield our judgment.

“As for Renan’s Life, it appears to me to be a charming composition, simple, and in style delightful. I should have thought it would have appealed pleasantly to the childish comprehension; however, as you object, with, no doubt, full and sufficient ground for your objections, we will leave the matter entirely in your hands and in those of your dear wife,” he added with a stiff bow in her direction, “a most excellent helpmeet in this as in all other things.”

“Oh, Mr. Waring, please don’t imagine that I meddle in all my husband’s business!” cried Mrs. Fellowes, half-amused and half-angry; it was too abominable to be made a sort of co, or under-curate to her husband, even by this pair of curiosities. “I should never dream of interfering in the religious instruction of anyone, either young or old; and if I had any mind to, I assure you my husband would soon strangle that tendency in me.”

“Oh dear me!” murmured Mr. Waring, “we always act so much together that I never thought of interference in such a connection; pray excuse me, dear Mrs. Fellowes,” he entreated nervously.

Mrs. Fellowes could have slain him and herself. She kept her eyes carefully turned from her husband but she felt his silent malicious laughter to the very tips of her fingers.

“Mr. Waring, there is nothing whatever to excuse, it is only a little silly clerical point of etiquette. You have no idea how the clerical mind runs to trifles, I am only beginning to get any correct notions and I have been studying it now over eight years. It is much more interesting than geology,” she continued, turning to Mrs. Waring and awakening her out of her reverie, “and requires quite as much hammering to get anything worth having out of it. John quite agrees with me.”

“Ah, Mrs. Fellowes, it is so easy for you to see fun in things,” said Mrs. Waring in a pretty wistful way; “it is quite a gift, I fear it has not been bestowed upon me.”

“Good gracious, I should think it hadn’t!” said Mrs. Fellowes to herself, “if you had a spark of it you’d keep him in his right mind as well as yourself.”

“Don’t you think Dacre looks rather idiotic?” whispered Gwen suddenly.

He certainly did, with his mouth ajar and the bright red tip of his tongue visible through his teeth.

“They always have that effect upon him,” continued Gwen, “a frequent course of it would very soon land him in an idiot asylum.”

“Hush, dear!”

Mr. Waring seemed now ill at ease and not at all satisfied at the way things were shaping. The affair was missing fire both for him and for his wife; they wanted, so to speak, a thorough microscopic examination of their children; they wanted them then and there put out on the table and carefully gone over as a preliminary proceeding, even if as yet no final and systematic classification of their contents could be attempted.

Where was the result of research to come in if the one was to be shipped off to school the very next day, and the other to be turned over to Mr. Fellowes? Mrs. Waring’s mind also ran in this groove.

“Will there not be an examination now at once?” she asked in pained surprise. “I quite understood this was our arrangement.”

“I too, dear love; we must discuss the matter. Mr. Fellowes,—ahem, my wife and I thought it might be as well to examine the state of our children’s minds now at once; it seems important to ascertain clearly how far our plans have been successful, and in this we might be of some help to you.”

Mr. Fellowes looked gravely annoyed. Dacre started violently and nearly took the tip off his tongue, and Gwen’s face fell; she straightened herself and a transfiguration fell upon her, her mouth hardened, her colour faded to a dull gray, and her eyes took on the masked look that Mrs. Fellowes so detested to see.

“Always the same!” she muttered, “always the same! I was beginning to think that with Dacre going to school and everything we might be let off and have tea instead. Look, there it is getting stone cold, they’ve clean forgotten it! I never can answer a word when they question me, it’s beastly unfair to force one into looking like a fool when one isn’t. Dacre, of course, might be a cabbage this minute—look at him! They treat one’s brains like puppets to dance when they whistle!”

“Gwen, dear Gwen, you let your tongue go mad!”

Gwen winced, she prided herself a good deal on her strength and reticence.

“As for the examination, it is quite natural your father and mother should arrive at some idea of your state of mind, and as they start on the premise that you know nothing they won’t expect you to shine.”

“You don’t know,” said the girl surlily, “one can’t argue from experience with regard to them ever, they are as reasonless and as unjust in their expectations as they are in everything.”

“Gwen, I am ashamed of you, you are unjust and no one else, and rather rude seeing that any questions you have to answer will be asked by Mr. Fellowes. Now listen, either your father or my husband is going to speak.”

“Your father and mother,” said Mr. Fellowes coming over and standing so that he could watch both of the children, “have asked me to put a few simple questions to you.”

The countenances of Mr. and Mrs. Waring fell visibly, this informal, good-humoured, casual way of carrying on, was not the sort of thing they had expected.

“One should make a speciality of every form of knowledge, however trivial,” said Mr. Waring in a low voice, “we should have put ourselves in a position to be competent personally to conduct this affair.”

His wife looked comprehension, and clasped his hand a trifle harder.

No one but themselves and possibly their Creator had any idea of the amount this unfortunate couple had to endure.

“If I ask you anything,” went on the rector, “and you can’t answer it, you mustn’t mind, for as you just now heard from your father you are not expected to know anything definitely.”

Gwen looked up with a quick sarcastic question in her face.

Mr. Fellowes laughed. “You think in that case I had better hold my tongue; well, perhaps I had, but even if one gains no absolute knowledge of the question asked, from the answers to it, one sometimes finds out other things just as useful. In your classical readings you came across many allusions to the gods of Greece and Rome, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” they assented. “That wasn’t much of a poser,” reflected Dacre glibly.

“On the whole what did you think of them?”

“They were pretty mean,” said Dacre with conviction.

“They were just like other people, only stronger, and better looking, and bigger,” said Gwen.

“Would you be inclined to think any one of them capable of any great or stupendous work?”

“Goodness no!” said Gwen, “they had a great deal too much to do with their little things; punishing mortals too, that took up half their time.”

“Well, then, who do you imagine made the world—have you ever thought on the subject?”

“This is most distressing,” whispered Mr. Waring, “he seems about to give all these rank hypotheses as facts—this is childish, unworthy of Gwen’s intellect!”

“Dear love, you are unfair, there is absolutely nothing proven on either side.”

“But the counter arguments will not be presented as facts.”

“The religious school has firm convictions and admits no hypotheses, I have heard. I confess this primitive mode rather interests me; I wonder what Gwen’s reply will be—hush, here it comes!”

“I never could think of any one person undertaking such a work,” said she, looking rather interested. “I have always thought it was done by some ceaseless force, that keeps things wound up.”

“Do you think this force a beneficent one or the contrary?”

“Just as the humour takes it. It seems sometimes quite human in its tempers and its injustice; rather capricious and old-womanish too,—I often think that.”

“Why?”

“Why! From the stupid times and places that earthquakes and waterspouts and things come, they hardly ever burst up or beat down desert islands or places like that; they always flock to populated places where people have been working for years to make themselves comfortable, and then all in a minute their work is undone and they may think themselves lucky if they aren’t undone altogether. That sort of thing seems reasonless and like an old woman.”

“Poor little foolish Gwen!” said Mrs. Fellowes, with such a funny look that Gwen had to laugh.

“When you are older,” said Mr. Fellowes, “and know more, you won’t be so final in your judgments. I’m going to tell you a fact now, will you believe it?”

Gwen got scarlet, the question seemed to her a reproach. “Mr. Fellowes, of course I will!”

“Then, Gwen, incredible as it sounds, a great, a glorious, and an Almighty God, a Spirit, Who has had neither beginning nor end, made this world and keeps it going, and He is neither unjust nor unreasonable, capricious nor an old woman, though,” he continued to the open-eyed wonder of two in that room, “that you should accredit Him with all of these rather despicable qualities, does not astonish me in the least. Can you take my word for this fact I have told you? If you can’t, say so; I need not ask you, however, you will be honest,” he added with a little amused laugh.

“It sounds rather queer and mixed up, considering things as things are,” said Gwen quaintly, “but I’d take your word for anything, Mr. Fellowes.”

Just then some unlucky impulse guided her eyes in her mother’s direction, a little softening towards her had seized on the girl for the instant and her eyes had followed her thoughts, but they dropped like a shot, she stiffened, and loosed hold of the piece of Mrs. Fellowes’ dress she had furtively been clinging to. Her mother’s eyes were fixed on her in a puzzled, uncomprehending, rather disappointed way, horribly trying to her pride.

“I’ll not say another word, not if they tear me with wild horses!” she said to herself tragically. “How dare she look at me like that! Now, Dacre, upon my word, I would not blame her if she did it to him! Dacre, you look awful!” she whispered viciously, “more beastly than human! Shut your mouth!”

And not another word could Mr. Fellowes, to his infinite relief, extract from the girl.

As for the boy he was, on the face of it, hopeless; so in defiance of and despite the protesting attitude of the harassed parents, the rector calmly put his foot down and brought this ceremony to a conclusion.

“Mr. Waring,” he said, “I think you must be satisfied that at least we have fairly virgin soil to work in.”

Mr. Waring mumbled a gentle, “H’m!” He was thoroughly dissatisfied with the whole business.

“Will you allow Gwen to come to our house,” went on Mr. Fellowes imperturbably, “every Tuesday and, let me see, every Friday afternoon?”

Gwen flashed a glance of delight on Mrs. Fellowes and across her she flung a grin of defiance on Dacre.

“And to Dacre, if you will allow me, I will give one or two books to read when he happens to get time. Story books, Dacre, don’t squirm.”

Mr. and Mrs. Waring again looked with melancholy regret at each other, then extended the glance to their offspring. When it reached Mr. Fellowes a slight touch of gentle wrath had flittered into it, but it was in vain to kick against the pricks, the proceedings were at an end, and another failure had died and was buried out of their sight.

And then they all drank some cold tea, and little atoms of cake were presented to the children, with a timid request from their mother to pick the currants out of them, this bugbear of their infancy still clinging to the little woman, and the drawing-room twilight was left at last free to the pair who looked haggard, tired, and frustrated.