"A most instructive morning," said Amherst.
"Protestants are wonderful people," said Cyril.
"I always said that man was a regular pet lamb," said Pansy. "And hadn't he pluck! Fancy givin' it us about that silly old baby tax with you two representatives of the government sitting under him an' freezin' him. I guess I'll have the Cheeper christened first opportunity, just to please him, what, old dear?"
Anthony, thus addressed, said, "As soon and as often as you like, darling. Don't mind me. Only I suppose you realise that it will mean thinking of a name for him—Sidney, or Bert, or Lloyd George or something."
"Montmorency," said Pansy promptly. "Monty for short, of course. That'll sound awfully well in revue."
It should be noted as one up for Mr. Delmer that his sermon, whether or not it brought many of his parishioners to the Government Mind Training Course, had anyhow (unless Pansy forgot again) brought one infant soul into the Christian Church.
4
Mrs. Delmer said to Ivy, "I suppose we shall all have to go in for it, dear, as father's told everyone we're going to. But I don't quite know how I'm going to get the time, especially with this new boy so untrustworthy about changing the hens' water when he feeds them and crushing up the bones for them. Perhaps he'll be better when he's taken the course himself. But I half suspect it's not so much stupidity as naughtiness.... Well, well, if father wants us to we must."
Jane said, kicking stones along the road as she walked, "Shall I be top of my form when I've taken the Course, mother? Shall I, mother? Will John? John was lower than me last week. Shall we, mother?"
Mrs. Delmer very sensibly observed that, if all the other children in the parish took the course too, as they ought, their relative capacities would remain unchanged. "But if both you and John took a little more pains over your home-work, Jane," she took the opportunity to add, whereupon Jane very naturally changed the subject.