in accord with modern light than the traditions that held in the childhood of the nation, no one minded; the children at Halgrave were not painfully sharp, and they soon got to love Mr. Gillat with a friendly lemon-droppish love which was not critical. Captain Polkington did not approve of the Sunday-school teaching, especially on those days when he had to clean the knives. The Sunday when Joost Van Heigen came was one of these. The Captain watched Mr. Gillat's preparations with a disgusted face; at last he remarked, "I wonder if you think you do any good by this nonsense?" Johnny, who had got as far as the doorstep, stopped and considered rather as if the idea had just occurred to him. "There must be teachers," he said at length, looking round at the open landscape; "and there aren't many about." "You are a fine teacher!" the Captain sneered. Mr. Gillat rubbed his finger along the edge of the Bible he carried. "I was wild," he confessed; "yes, I was, I don't think--but then the rector said--and Julia--" His meaning was rather obscure, but possibly the Captain followed it although he did cut him short by saying, "I should never have expected it of you; if any one had told me that you, one of us, would take to this sort of thing, I would not have believed it. I mean, if they had told me in the old days, before things were changed and broken up, when we were still alive and things moved at a pace--when a man knew if he were alive or dead and whether it was night or morning." "Yes, yes," Johnny said, but not altogether as if he regretted the passing of those golden days; "things were different then; we didn't think of it then." "Teaching in the Sunday school?" the Captain asked. "Not quite! And if we had, we shouldn't have thought of coming to it even when we had got old and foolish." Johnny looked uncomfortable and unhappy; then a bright idea occurred to him. "There wasn't a Sunday school there," he said. "You remember the hill station?" Just then Julia called from the house, "Father, I believe we might have a dish of turnip tops if you would get them. Johnny, you will be late if you don't start soon." Johnny promptly started, and the Captain, less promptly, sauntered away to find a basket for the turnip tops, muttering the while something about people whose religion took the form of going out and leaving others to do the work. But by the time Joost Van Heigen arrived, the Captain was quite amiable again. He had had a quiet morning with nothing to do after the turnip tops were brought in and the knives cleaned, and Johnny had had a long tiring walk home from church in a hot sun and a high wind, which Captain Polkington felt to be a just dispensation of Providence to reward those who stopped at home and cleaned knives. Joost arrived not long after Mr. Gillat; Julia heard the gate click as she was taking the meat from before the fire. "Who is that, Johnny?" she asked.