“Well, Uncle Tom,” said the tenacious Millicent, “I am arguing about what Gervase would call the peril of a priori judgments. It seems to me that the Christian religion itself is a proof of it. How does your theory account for the fact that Jesus was a village carpenter?” The vicar drew up his long, thin, rather ascetic frame to the topmost of its seventy-two inches. “My dear child,” he said solemnly, “my theory accounts for that fact by simply assuming that Jesus was God Himself. It is the only reasonable hypothesis. Without it there is no such thing as the Christian religion.” “But, Uncle Tom, to quote Gervase again, isn’t that the greatest of all assumptions for a rational mind to make?” “Undoubtedly, my dear. And it is only permitted to us to make it by the implicit eye of faith.” “Do you mean that the Incarnation is the only matter in which we are to exercise faith?” “Ah, now we are getting into theology.” Mr. Perry-Hennington took up his niece with a little air of bland condescension. “You mustn’t bother your pretty head about that. I must go now.” A pang shot through him as he suddenly remembered the morrow’s sermon. “I must leave you, my dear, to help the children put together their picture puzzle. Good-by. Gervase is really quite as well as I had hoped to find him. Let us continue to have faith.” Thereupon the vicar tore himself away from a controversy in which he felt he was showing, as usual, to singular advantage. He was so sure of the ground on which he stood, that even poor Gervase’s highly trained intellect, of which the callow, fluffy-headed Millicent was the merest echo, was hardly able to meet him upon it. Moreover the vicar was a born fighter, and the trend of the discussion with his niece had had the effect of stirring in his mind the embers of a latent antagonism. The truth was, Brandon had never been quite forgiven a _mot_ he had once permitted himself. He had said that the Established Church was determined to eat his cake and to have it: that is, it was reared on the basis of two and two makes five, but ordered its conduct on the basis of two and two makes four. As the vicar left the inner hall he heard the voice of the curly-headed Joskin uplifted in a wail: “Oh, mummy, _do_ come and help us! We can’t fit it in. There’s a piece missing.” VII THE vicar remembered his sermon and looked at his watch. It was within twenty minutes of luncheon; the most valuable morning of the week was gone. The spirit of vexation rose in him again. It was all the fault of this miserable fellow, John Smith. Two priceless hours had been lavished on this wastrel, this dead charge on the community. Moreover he would not be able to make up for lost time in the course of the afternoon. At three o’clock he was due at Brombridge to attend the War Economy Committee; at seven he had to take the chair at a recruiting meeting at Grayfield, and dine afterward with his old Magdalen friend, Whymper.