In analyzing his duty with respect to Leila, it occurred to Mills that he might have been culpable in not laying more stress upon the merits of religion in the upbringing of Leila. She had gone to Sunday school in her earliest youth; but churchgoing was not to her taste. He was unable to remember when Leila had last attended church, but never voluntarily within his recollection. She needed, he decided, the sobering influence of religion. God, in Mills’s speculations, was on the side of order, law and respectability. The church frowned upon divorce; and Leila must be saved from the disgrace of marrying a divorced man. Leila needed religion, and the idea broadened in Mills’s mind until he saw that probably Constance and Shepherd, too, would be safer under the protecting arm of the church. The Sunday following Christmas seemed to Mills a fitting time for renewing the family’s acquaintance with St. Barnabas. When he telephoned his invitation to Constance, carefully putting it in the form of a suggestion, he found his daughter-in-law wholly agreeable to the idea. She and Shepherd would be glad to breakfast with him and accompany him to divine worship. When he broached the matter to Leila she did not explode as he had expected. She took a cigarette from her mouth and expelled the smoke from her lungs. “Sure, I’ll go with you, Dada,” she replied. He had suggested nine as a conservative breakfast hour, but Constance and Shepherd were fifteen minutes late. Leila was considerably later, but appeared finally, after the maid had twice been dispatched to her room. Having danced late, she was still sleepy. At the table she insisted on scanning the society page of the morning newspaper. This annoyed Mills, particularly when in spreading out the sheet she upset her water glass, with resulting deplorable irrigation of the tablecloth and a splash upon Connie’s smart morning dress that might or might not prove permanently disfiguring. Mills hated a messy table. He also hated criticism of food. Leila’s complaint that the scalloped sweetbreads were too dry evoked the pertinent retort that if she hadn’t been late they wouldn’t have been spoiled. “I guess that’ll hold me for a little while,” she said cheerfully. “I say, Dada, what do we get for going to church?” “You’ll get what you need from Doctor Lindley,” Mills replied, frowning at the butler, who was stupidly oblivious of the fact that the flame under the percolator was threatening a general conflagration. Shepherd, in trying to clap on the extinguisher, burned his fingers and emitted a shrill cry of pain. All things considered, the breakfast was hardly conducive to spiritual uplift.