no more to be said.  They were mildly useful for entertaining the children and taking them to Southend, and in cases of absolute despair they could be relied upon for soup-tickets or even half-crowns; but the big mysterious church, with its gilded screen, its curious dark glass, and its white little side-chapel, with the Morris hangings, the great clergy-house, the ladies, the parish magazine and all the rest of it—­these were simply inexplicable.  Above all inexplicable was the passion displayed for district-visiting—­that strange impulse that drove four highly-cultivated young men in black frock-coats and high hats and ridiculous little collars during five afternoons in the week to knock at door after door all over the district and conduct well-mannered conversations with bored but polite mothers of families.  It was one of the phenomena that had to be accepted.  She supposed it stood for something beyond her perceptions.

“I thought I must come in and make your acquaintance,” said the clergyman, nursing his hat and smiling at the company. (He, too, occasionally shared Mrs. Partington’s wonder as to the object of all this; but he, too, submitted to it as part of the system.) “People come and go so quickly, you know—­”

“Very pleased to see a clergyman,” said the Major smoothly.  “No objection to smoke, sir, I presume?” He indicated his pipe.

“Not at all,” said the clergyman.  “In fact, I smoke myself; and if Mrs. Partington will allow me—­” He produced a small pink and gilded packet of Cinderellas. (I think he thought it brought him vaguely nearer the people to smoke Cinderellas.)

“Oh! no objection at all, sir,” put in Mrs. Partington, still a little grimly. (She was still secretly resenting being called upon at half-past six.  You were usually considered immune from this kind of thing after five o’clock.)

“So I thought I must just look in and catch you one evening,” explained the clergyman once more, “and tell you that we’re your friends here—­the clergy, you know—­and about the church and all that.”

He was an extremely conscientious young man—­this Mr. Parham-Carter—­an old Etonian, of course, and now in his first curacy.  It was all pretty bewildering to him, too, this great and splendid establishment, the glorious church by Bodley, with the Magnificat in Gothic lettering below the roof, the well-built and furnished clergy-house, the ladies’ house, the zeal, the self-devotion, the parochial machinery, the Band of Hope, the men’s and boys’ clubs, and, above all, the furious district-visiting.  Of course, it produced results, it kept up the standards of decency and civilization and ideals; it was a weight in the balances on the side of right and good living; the clubs kept men from the public-house to some extent, and made it possible for boys to grow up with some chance on their side.  Yet he wondered, in fits of despondency, whether there were not something wrong somewhere....  But he accepted it:  it was the approved method, and he himself was a learner, not a teacher.