On the whole an agreeable family, and well-intentioned (though Ivy and Betty quarrelled continuously and stole each other's things), but certainly to be numbered among the simple, who were urged to get understanding. Would they ever get it? That was the question, for them and for the whole congregation here present, from the smallest, grubbiest school-child furtively sucking bulls'-eyes and wiping its sticky hands upon its teacher's skirt, to the vicar in the pulpit, giving out his text. "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God"; that was the text. Ivy saw a little smile cross the clever and conceited face of Mr. Amherst as it was given out. He settled himself down to listen, expectant of entertainment. He believed that he was in luck. For Mr. Amherst, who did not say in his heart that there was no God, because even in his heart he scorned the affirmation of the obvious, was of those who are sure that all members of the Christian Church are fools (unlike Mr. Arnold Bennett, who tries and fails, he did not even try to think of them as intellectual equals), so he avoided, where he could, the study of clever Christians, and welcomed the evidences of weakness of intellect that crossed his path. He believed that this was going to be a foolish sermon, which, besides amusing them all, would help him in his article on Organised Religion. Ivy could not help watching the End House people. Somehow she knew how the sermon was affecting them. She didn't think it funny, but she suspected that they would. Her father wasn't as clever as they were; that was why he failed to say anything that could impress them except as either dull or comic. Brains again. How much they mattered. Clergymen ought to have brains; it seemed very important. They ought to know how to appeal to rich and poor, high and low, wise and simple. This extraordinary thing called religion--(Ivy quite newly and unusually saw it as extraordinary, seeing it for a moment with the eyes of the End House, to all of whom, except Miss Ponsonby and, presumably, Cyril Grammont, it was like fairy lore, like Greek mythology, mediæval archaic nonsense)--this extraordinary lore and the more extraordinary force behind it, was in the hands, mainly (like everything else), of incompetents, clerical and lay, who did not understand it themselves and could not help others to do so. They muddled about with it, as Miss Pomfrey muddled about with office papers.... It would not be surprising if the force suddenly demolished them all, like lightning.... But such speculations were foreign to Ivy, and she forgot them in examining the hat of Mrs. Peterson, the grocer's wife, which was so noticeable in its excessive simplicity--its decoration consisted wholly of home-grown vegetables--as to convince beholders that Mr. Peterson had _not_, as some falsely said, made a fortune during the war by cornering margarine. 2