It must be remembered for what, exactly, Claxted stood. Quite apart from the rights or wrongs of religion, there was a life in Claxted that was a sheer antithesis to this. It was an antithesis in small things as well as in big, in utterly unreasonable and stupid things as well as in vital ones. Thus, at Claxted, one never, at dinner or supper, sat down to boiled beans and bacon; if one had, it would not have been regarded as an adventure; moreover one never did sit down without potatoes. It is extraordinarily easy to make a mock of it, but there was a hid parable there. Food was food at Claxted; at Thurloe End it was a sacrament, and a merry sacrament of life. Nor was it less life because to Father Vassall it was Catholic life. Thus Father Vassall even ate fish and maigre soup on Fridays, and enjoyed disliking it. Most mornings there chanced to be early spring sunshine, and breakfast was served out of doors. Breakfast out of doors at Claxted would have seemed to verge on the profane, almost on the immoral. Tea, out of doors, in midsummer, yes; prepared for, with guests. At Thurloe End they ran in hastily for a little tea because they were so busy gardening, and the lights were not long. At Claxted wine was a mocker; at Thurloe End, the cask of Spanish Burgundy having just arrived, they bottled it with zest and solemnity. At Claxted, again, the rooms were elect to their various ends. The drawing-room was for callers, tea and Sunday afternoons. The study was for sermons. The dining-room was the room in which one dined; in which Mr. Kestern rested for an hour after dinner; in which, after supper, all duly remained, with books or work, till prayers and bed. Moreover, there was routine order at Claxted, a pleasant, simple, kindly routine, but routine. A Puritan routine, too, it was of course. It had never struck Paul before, but no one laughed much at Claxted. The family was anything but solemn; possibly, temperamentally, it was inclined to be grave; but, then, on the other hand, it never, never _rioted_. Oh, except at a Christmas party, at hide and seek and blind man's buff. And now that one was grown up, one did not play such games.