"Do you really think, dear," she said, "that you are wise in encouraging a charity which is not in any way under the control of the Church?"
"Oh, isn't it?" Sybil remarked. "I'm sure I didn't know. But then the Church hasn't anything quite like this, has it? Mr. Brooks is so clever and original in all his ideas."
The disapprobation of the bishop's wife became even more marked.
"The very fact," she said, "that the Church has not thought it wise to institute a charitable scheme upon such—er—sweeping lines, is a proof, to my mind, that the whole thing is a mistake. As a matter of fact, I happen to know that the bishop strongly disapproves of Mr. Brooks' methods."
"That's rather a pity, isn't it?" Sybil asked, sweetly. "The Society has done so much good, and in so short a time. Every one admits that."
"I think that the opinion is very far from universal," the elder lady remarked, firmly. "There appears to be no discrimination shown whatever in the distribution of relief. The deserving and the undeserving are all classed together. I could not possibly approve of any charity conducted upon such lines, nor, I think, could any good churchwoman."
"Mr. Brooks thinks," Sybil remarked, with her mouth full of cake, "that it is the undeserving who are in the greatest need of help."
"One could believe anything," the bishop's wife said stiffly, "of a man who adopted such principles as that. And although I do not as a rule approve of Mr. Lavilette or his paper, I am seriously inclined to agree with him in some of his strictures upon Mr. Brooks."
Sybil laughed softly.
"I hadn't read them," she remarked. "Mother doesn't allow the man's paper in the house. Do you really mean that you have it at the palace, Mrs. Endicott?"