Her hearers exchanged an alarmed glance.

“What do you want them to do?” said John uneasily.  “Argue about it?  Besides, this morning was very exceptionally hot.”

“I don’t want to be any more heathen than I have to be,” went on Desire, “but I must be terribly heathen if what Mr. McClintock said this morning is right.  He was speaking of pain, physical pain, and, he said God. sent it.  I always thought,” she concluded naively, “that it came straight from the devil.”

“Healthy chap, McClintock!” said Benis lazily.  “Never had anything worse than measles and doesn’t remember them.”

“What I’d like to know,” said the doctor, “would be his opinion after several weeks of—­something unpleasant.  He might feel more like blaming the devil.  What does he think doctors are fighting?  God?  By Jove, I must have this out with McClintock!  I know that, for one, I never fight down pain without a glorious sense of giving Satan his licks.”

“But you did not even listen.”

“I’m listening now.”

“And no one else seemed to object to anything he said.  I heard some of them call it a ‘beautiful discourse’ and ‘so helpful.’”

Under her perplexed gaze the two Bainbridgers were clearly uncomfortable.

“It’s because you don’t really care what you hear from the pulpit,” said the girl accusingly.  “You have your own beliefs and go your own ways.  Another man’s views, good or bad, make no difference.”

“S-shish! ’ware Aunt Caroline!” warned the professor, but Desire was too absorbed to heed.

“Why, if one actually believed half of what was said this morning,” she went on, “the world would be a beautiful garden with half its lovely things forbidden.  ‘Don’t touch the flowers’ and ’Keep off the grass’ would be everywhere.  It seems such a waste, if God made so many happy things and then doesn’t like it if people are too happy.”

“Not many of us suffer from too much happiness,” muttered Benis.

“Or too much health,” echoed the doctor.  “I’d like to tell McClintock that if people would expect more health, they’d get more.  The ordinary person expects ill-ness.  They have a ’disease complex’- -that’s in your line, Benis.  But just supposing they could change the idea—­Eh?  Supposing everybody began to look for health—­just take it, you know, as a God-intended right?  I’d lose half my living in a fortnight.”

“John Rogers!” Aunt Caroline’s voice fell with the effect of sizzling hailstones upon the fire of John’s enthusiasm.  “If you must talk heresy, there are other places beside my garden to do it in.”

“I was merely saying—­”