"I don't, my dear," he returned, "question any thing; but if I should do so it would be precisely because of the greater advantage constituted for the Putchins by the simplicity of their spirit. They were kept straight by the quality of their ignorance--which was denser even than mine. It was a mistake in us from the first to have attempted to correct or to disguise ours. We should have waited simply to become good parrots, to learn our lesson--all on the spot here, so little of it is wanted--and squawk it off." "Ah 'squawk,' love--what a word to use about Him!" "It isn't about Him--nothing's about Him. None of Them care tuppence about Him. The only thing They care about is this empty shell--or rather, for it isn't empty, the extraneous preposterous stuffing of it." "Preposterous?"--he made her stare with this as he hadn't yet done. At sight of her look, however--the gleam, as it might have been, of a queer suspicion--he bent to her kindly and tapped her cheek. "Oh it's all right. We _must_ fall back on the Putchins. Do you remember what she said?--'They've made it so pretty now.' They _have_ made it pretty, and it's a first-rate show. It's a first-rate show and a first-rate billet, and He was a first-rate poet, and you're a first-rate woman--to put up so sweetly, I mean, with my nonsense." She appreciated his domestic charm and she justified that part of his tribute which concerned herself. "I don't care how much of your nonsense you talk to me, so long as you _keep_ it all for me and don't treat _Them_ to it." "The pilgrims? No," he conceded--"it isn't fair to Them. They mean well." "What complaint have we after all to make of Them so long as They don't break off bits--as They used, Miss Putchin told us, so awfully--in order to conceal them about Their Persons? She broke Them at least of that." "Yes," Gedge mused again; "I wish awfully she hadn't!" "You'd like the relics destroyed, removed? That's all that's wanted!" "There _are_ no relics." "There won't be any _soon_--unless you take care." But he was already laughing, and the talk wasn't dropped without his having patted her once more. An impression or two nevertheless remained with her from it, as he saw from a question she asked him on the morrow. "What did you mean yesterday about Miss Putchin's simplicity--its keeping her 'straight'? Do you mean mentally?" Her "mentally" was rather portentous, but he practically confessed. "Well, it kept her up. I mean," he amended, laughing, "it kept her down."