'What is your line, may I ask?' inquired the stripe-suited man.

'Religion.'

'The hell—I beg your pardon. If you mean that you're a preacher or something like that, all I've got to say is, you're a funny one. It's your job, isn't it, to be dead sure that everything's all right, or somehow going to be all right—no matter about all the mussed-upness? Yes, that's certainly your job. Yet here you are, asking why we go on stocking the world with kids. I might ask that,—I'm in rubber tires,—but not you. Yes, I might—only I don't.'

The man who had been shaving had resumed his tie, collar, and coat, and now lighted a cigarette.

'I lay my money,' he said, 'on one thing: that, if men let themselves go, they wind up shortly with God—or with what would be God if there were any. You've come to it early—through the Ledger. You'd have got to it sooner or later, though, if you'd been talking about hunting-dogs—provided you'd have let yourselves go.'

'Well, now,' asked the closely built man, 'what is your line?'

'Education.'

'High-brow company! Seems to me the pair of you ought to be silencers for a plain business man like me. Rubber is my line—not how the world is run. My opinion on that is small change, sure. Yet I think it ought to be run,—the world, I mean,—even if it's mussed-up to the limit, and I think it's up to us to keep it running. The parson here—if he is a parson—asks why we should; that is, if I get him. And then I think there's a manager of it all in the central office—a manager, understand, though he never seems to show up around the works, and certainly does seem to have some of the darnedest ways. The professor here—if he is a professor—doesn't sense any manager; that is, if I get him straight, with his "if there were any." That was what you said, wasn't it? I'm a picked chicken on religion and education, but, honest, both those ideas would mean soft tires for me—yes, sir, soft tires.'

'Broad Street, gentlemen,' said the porter at the door.

The Reverend Allan Dare walked away from the train and down the street. He was Episcopally faced and Episcopally trim, and he was having considerable difficulty in holding his universe together. This is not pleasant at forty-two, when you want your universe held together and things settled and calm. He had an uncomfortable sense that this difficulty had jolted into plain sight on the car.