Eleanor put down her coffee cup, looked at him helplessly, and smiled.

"Somebody who will present Christianity to me in such a manner that it
will appeal to my reason, and enable me to assimilate it into my life."

"Good for you, Nell," said her husband, approvingly. "Come now,
professor, you sit up in the University' Club all Sunday morning and
discuss recondite philosophy with other learned agnostics, tell us what
is the matter with Mr. Hodder's theology. That is, if it will not shock
grandmother too much."

"I'm afraid I've got used to being shocked, Phil," said Mrs. Waring, with
her quiet smile.

"It's unfair," Mr. Bridges protested, "to ask a prejudiced pagan like me
to pronounce judgment on an honest parson who is labouring according to
his lights."

"Go on, George. You shan't get out of it that way."

"Well," said George, "the trouble is, from the theological point of view,
that your parson is preaching what Auguste Sabatier would call a
diminished and mitigated orthodoxy."

"Great heavens!" cried Phil. "What's that?"

"It's neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, nor good red herring," the professor
declared. "If Mr. Hodder were cornered he couldn't maintain that he, as
a priest, has full power to forgive sins, and yet he won't assert that he