At such times it was always of his money and his children’s and grandchildren’s money that he thought. It was useless to tell himself how few his own wants were, or that it might be better for his children to have to make their way. Such thoughts gave him no relief. His fears went deeper than mere facts; they were religious, as it were, and founded in an innermost belief that, by money only, Nature could be held at bay. Of this, from the moment when he first made money, his senses had informed him, and slowly, surely, gone on doing so, till his very being was soaked through with the conviction. He might be told on Sundays that money was not everything, but he knew better. Seated in the left-hand aisle, he seemed lost in reverence--a grandchild on either hand, his old knees in quiet trousers, crossed, his white-fringed face a little turned towards the preacher, one neat-gloved hand reposing on his thigh, the other keeping warm a tiny hand thrust into it. But his old brain was far away, busy amongst the Tables of Commandment, telling him how much to spend to get his five per cent. and money back; his old heart was busy with the little hand tucked into his. There was nothing in such sermons, therefore, that could quarrel with his own religion, for he did not hear them; and even had he heard them, they would not have quarrelled, his own creed of money being but the natural modern form of a religion that his fathers had interpreted as the laying-up of treasure in the life to come. He was only able nowadays to _say_ that he believed in any life to come, so that his commercialism had been forced to find another outlet, and advance a step, in accordance with the march of knowledge. His religious feeling about money did not make him selfish, or niggardly in any way--it merely urged him to preserve himself--not to take risks that he could reasonably avoid, either in his mode of life, his work, or in the propagation of his children. He had not married until he had a position to offer to the latter, sufficiently secure from changes and chances in this mortal life, and even then he had not been too precipitate, confining the number to three boys, and one welcome girl, in accordance with the increase of his income. In the circles where he moved, his course of action was so normal that no one had observed the mathematical connection between increasing income and the production and education of his family. Still less had any one remarked the deep and silent process by which there passed from him to them the simple elements of faith.