Yes, yes, that was more intelligent. He scratched his head and looked down at his feet. Really when you come to think of it, Christians did eat repulsive things. There was a Christian boy in the playground one afternoon eating a _brawn_ sandwich--despicable food, spotted and pale pink like the white cat at home after the kettle of boiling water had fallen on its fur. True! it seemed that Christian boys occasionally went for their holidays and saw cows and trees and things--a distinct feather in the Christian hat. But on the other hand, Mr. Barkle was a Christian, and only Christians could kill rabbits like Mr. Barkle. The slaughtering of animals was a very peculiar and limited privilege among his own folk--a rite performed, as Reb Monash had made clear to the _chayder_, swiftly, painlessly and professionally. Mr. Barkle, on the other hand, had brought a rabbit into Standard Two for "object lesson" and murdered it, slowly, publicly. Mr. Barkle himself was not unlike a rabbit. He was very fat and his grey waistcoat resembled the rabbit's belly. But his eyes sparkled somewhat unpleasantly--very different from the rabbit's big, brown frightened eyes. And Mr. Barkle had pressed the rabbit's neck between his hands, till the eyes became bigger and bigger, and the legs moved convulsively, and a long low whistle came out mournfully from the rabbit's throat, and the legs twitched only faintly and then hung quite limp. After Mr. Barkle had cut up the animal to describe its parts, a little Christian boy had said: "Please, Mister Barkle, can I take the rabbit 'ome? Farver luvs rabbits!" No! Philip determined. _No!_ he would never be a Christian! Yet Miss Green was a Christian. It would be impolite to be too decided about it. "Please, Miss Green," he said, looking up, "I'd rarver stay wot I was born!" "There's a wise boy!" said Miss Green, with the faintest touch of chagrin. And the conversation pursued less transcendental roads. CHAPTER III At no time did Philip find the society of his coevals congenial; the society at least of the young males of his age; which was an element in his composition not, I venture, to be crudely dismissed as one form or another of priggishness. Whatever the defects were of Philip's education, and these were not inconsiderable, he was never warned to have no truck with Barney of next door because his father was a presser and rigidly banished collars from his wardrobe, excepting on _Yom Kippur_, the Day of Atonement, on which occasion a waterproof collar did annual service with much _éclat_; nor were fogs of dubiety sedulously created around Mr. and Mrs. Lavinsky, whose premarital relations were, it was rumoured, not free from stain.