course you don't agree with me as to the importance of forms of
worship, but suppose that it were your own church, and the question
were of having a man put into a place so influential. Wouldn't you be
troubled if one were likely to be chosen who taught what you regarded
as heresy?"

She smiled on him still, but he saw the seriousness in her eyes.

"Yes," she said, "I suppose I should; but doesn't it ever occur to you,
Philip, that we are all too much inclined to feel that everything is
going wrong if Providence doesn't work in our way? We can't help, I
suppose, the habit of regarding our plans as somehow essential to the
proper management of the universe."

He laughed and shook his head.

"You always had a most effective way of taking down my conceit," he
responded. "I don't mean that it is necessary that Father Frontford
shall be bishop because I want him, but"--

"But because you believe in him," his mother interrupted with a little
twinkle in her eye. "Well, we cannot do better than to follow our
convictions, I suppose."

She ended with a sigh, and Philip knew that it was because into her
mind came the sadness she felt at his defection from the faith of his
fathers.

"Yes, you trained me from the cradle to do what I thought right without
considering the consequences."