personal care of God?' It's perfect nonsense for Helen to talk in that
way! What does she know about 'character' and 'irresponsible suffering'?
I shall tell her to mend her husband's stockings, and not bother her
little head with theological questions that are too big for her."

"Yes, sir," Lois answered, carefully snipping off the thorns on the
stem of a rose before she plunged it down into the water in the big
punch-bowl; "but people cannot help just wondering sometimes."

"Now, Lois, don't you begin to talk that way," the rector cried
impatiently; "one in a family is enough!"

"Well," said Dick Forsythe gayly, "what's the good of bothering about
things you can't understand?"

"Exactly," the rector answered. "Be good! if we occupy our minds with
conduct, we won't have room for speculation, which never made a soul
better or happier, anyhow. Yes, it's all nonsense, and I shall tell Helen
so; there is too much tendency among young people to talk about things
they don't understand, and it results in a superficial, skin-deep sort of
skepticism that I despise! Besides," he added, laughing and knocking his
glasses off, "what is the good of having a minister for a husband? She
ought to ask him her theological questions."

"Well, now, you know, father," Lois said, "Helen isn't the sort of woman
to be content just to step into the print her husband's foot has made.
She'll choose what she thinks is solid ground for herself. And she isn't
superficial."

"Oh, no, of course not," the rector began, relenting. "I didn't mean to