"Nerve gone already," said Christian. "That's what comes of missing a
season!" She laughed up at him.

"Don't know," said Larry, dropping down beside her on the dry, sun-hot
grass; "quite likely; but it wasn't that. The fact was"--he
hesitated--"I met a very decent Padre at Mürren. We used to talk a lot
about--oh, no end of things! When he found I was Irish he was awfully
pleased. He congratulated me on belonging to the Old Faith--he's Irish
himself, but he's never lived over here. He said it was such a
wonderful link with the people and the past--such a romantic religion!
And so it is, you know. It hadn't struck me, somehow, till Father
Nugent talked of it. I'm sorry for you, Christian! Don't you feel
being a Protestant is a bit--well--stodgy--and respectable--no sort of
poetry?"

"I like stodge," said Christian, serenely.

Larry paid this frivolity no attention. He had only recently
discovered that he possessed a soul, and he was as much pleased with
it as he had been with his first watch, and he found much the same
enjoyment in producing and examining it, that had been afforded to him
by the watch.

"It was Father Nugent's suggestion to give up smoking," he said,
unable to eliminate from his voice a touch of pride, "I knocked off
whiskies and sodas, too--but that was off my own bat."

"'Smite them by the merit of the Lenten Fast!'" murmured Christian.
Unlike Larry, she evaded personalities and especially those that