ailments did not require her presence at home, had been brought up to exercise her faculties freely on problems of faith and to feel herself a little more enlightened than the conventional worshipper.  Still she was not averse to following her husband to the Rev. Henry Glynn’s church.  The experience was another revelation to her, for service at Westfield had been eminently severe and unadorned.  Mr. Glynn was an Englishman; a short, stout, strenuous member of the Church of England with a broad accent and a predilection for ritual, but enthusiastic and earnest.  He had been tempted to cross the ocean by the opportunities for preaching the gospel to the heathen, and he had fixed on Benham as a vineyard where he could labor to advantage.  His advent had been a success.  He had awakened interest by his fervor and by his methods.  The pew taken by Babcock was one of the last remaining, and there was already talk of building a larger church to replace the chapel where he ministered.  Choir boys, elaborate vestments, and genuflections, were novelties in the Protestant worship of Benham, and attracted the attention of many almost weary of plainer forms of worship, especially as these manifestations of color were effectively supplemented by evident sincerity of spirit on the part of their pastor.  Nor were his energy and zeal confined to purely spiritual functions.  The scope of his church work was practical and social.  He had organized from the congregation societies of various sorts to relieve the poor; Bible classes and evening reunions which the members of the parish were urged to attend in order to become acquainted.  Mr. Glynn’s manner was both hearty and pompous.  To him there was no Church in the world but the Church of England, and it was obvious that as one of the clergy of that Church he considered himself to be no mean man; but apart from this serious intellectual foible with respect to his own relative importance, he was a stimulating Christian and citizen within his lights.  His active, crusading, and emotional temperament just suited the seething propensities of Benham.

His flock comprised a few of the residents of the River Drive district, among them the Flaggs, but was a fairly representative mixture of all grades of society, including the poorest.  These last were specimens under spiritual duress rather than free worshippers, and it was a constant puzzle to the reverend gentleman why, in the matter of attendance, they, metaphorically speaking, sickened and died.  It had never been so in England.  “Bonnets!” responded one day Mrs. Hallett Taylor, who had become Mr. Glynn’s leading ally in parish matters, and was noted for her executive ability.  She was an engaging but clear-headed soul who went straight to the point.

“I do not fathom your meaning,” said the pastor, a little loftily, for the suggestion sounded flippant.

“It hurts their feelings to go to a church where their clothes are shabby compared with those of the rest of the congregation.”