With time, Joan, his old antagonist, had begun to weaken, and now she too took a hand in the church work. She consented to join the Altar Society, and developed quite a talent for arranging the flowers in their stiff brass vases. The flowers in themselves gave her pleasure, appealing to what was left of her sense of the beautiful. Someone had to take Mrs. Ogden to church, she was too feeble to go alone; so the task fell to Joan, as a matter of course. She would push her mother in a light wicker bath chair which they had bought secondhand, or on very special occasions drive with her in a fly. Also as a matter of course she now took part in the services, neither impressed nor the reverse, but remaining purely neutral. She followed the easiest path these days, and did most things rather than make the necessary effort to resist. After all, what did it matter, one church was as good as another, she supposed. She was not quite dishonest in her attitude towards Ritualism, neither was she strictly honest; it was only that the combative instincts of youth had battered themselves to death in her; now she felt no very strong emotions, and did not want to. CHAPTER FORTY-TWO 1 THE poor of Seabourne were really non-existent; but since certain types of religiously-minded people are not happy unless they find some class beneath them on whom to lavish unwelcome care, the churches of each denomination, and of these there were at least four, invented deserving poor for themselves and visited them strenuously. Of all the pastors in the little town, Father Cuthbert was the most energetic. Mrs. Ogden was particularly interested in this branch of church work. District visiting had come to her as second nature; she had found immense satisfaction and a salve to her pride in patronizing people who could not retaliate. But lately her failing health made the long walks impossible, so that she was reduced to sitting at home and thinking out schemes whereby the humbler members of the congregation might be coerced into doing something that they did not want to. She looked up from her paper one morning with triumph in her eye. "I knew it would come!" she remarked complacently. "What would come?" Joan inquired. She did not feel that she cared very much just then if the Day of Judgment itself were at hand; but long experience had taught her that silence was apt to make her mother more loquacious than an assumption of interest. "The influenza; I knew it would come! There are three cases in Seabourne." "Well, what of it?" said Joan, yawning. "The world's very much over-populated; I'm sure Seabourne is." "My dear, don't be callous, and it's the pneumonic kind; I believe those Germans are still spreading microbes." "Oh, nonsense!" said Joan irritably.