His father looked at his son with a curious smile.
“Oh, I know what you are thinking,” said his son, “but I assure you it is not quite a case of funk.”
“Do you know, Jack,” said his father earnestly, “we make our religion far too unreal; a thing either of forms remote from life, or a thing of individualistic emotion divorced from responsibility. One thing history reveals, that the early propagandum for the faith was entirely unprofessional. It was from friend to friend, from man to man. It was horizontal rather than perpendicular.”
“Well, I shall think it over,” said Jack.
“Do you know,” said his father, “that I have the feeling of having accepted from Rob responsibility for our utmost endeavour to bring it about that, as Rob puts it, 'somehow he shall get back'?”
It was full twenty minutes before train time when Rob, torn with anxiety lest they should be late, marched his brother on to the railway platform to wait for the Camerons, who were to arrive from the North. Up and down they paraded, Dunn turning over in his mind the conversation of the night before, Rob breaking away every three minutes to consult the clock and the booking clerk at the wicket.
“Will he come to us this afternoon, Jack, do you think?” enquired the boy.
“Don't know! He turned down a football lunch! He has his sister and his father with him.”
“His sister could come with him!” argued the boy.
“What about his father?”