I wiped Barbara’s eyes. “You’ll cry your lashes away,” I said. “Look at Harry. He never cries.”

Her tears began to flow again. “Harry’s a boy! Harry’s a boy!”

I knew what she meant. She was entitled to weep; and to long eyelashes also. In actual fact, Harry’s eyelashes were longer than hers; her grandmother had only last Sunday pointed this out to her, and it still rankled.

Harry’s smile broadened. Now it was identifiably an impudent little boy’s.

“You can wipe that grin off your face,” I said. “You haven’t as much time as all that. You’re absolutely black. Go on, get to the bathroom.”

I gave him a little push; he winced away as I touched him, but he still made no move.

“What are you waiting for?” I heard the irritation in my voice; there wasn’t any need for it, but Harry almost always rubbed me up the wrong way.

“I can’t go to the bathroom,” he said.

“Why can’t you?”

“Because Mummy’s there. So I’ll just have to resign myself to wait.” He yawned, and then Carruthers came back to his face.

“You know what I mean. Wash your face and hands and put your Sunday clothes on.”

“I haven’t any Sunday clothes,” he said.

“I take your point,” I said. “One has heard your grandmother on this subject. But stop arguing the toss and go and do what I tell you.”

Barbara, who had been listening intently, had at last stopped crying.

“You’re naughty, Harry,” she said. “You always talk back to Daddy.”

Harry shrugged his shoulders. It was a strangely adult ges­ture, and typical of him; he meant, without actually saying so, that what­ever I said or did wasn’t of the least importance.

“Don’t panic,” he said. “I’ll go and wash and put on my Sun­day clothes.” He strolled into the house leaving me feeling rather mean but still aware, however confusedly, that I was in the right.

Once actually inside the church I began to feel better. We’d been going to St. Alfred’s for some ten years now; I suppose that I’d begun to go originally to please my mother-in-law but now I went to please myself. (I had long ago, in any case, abandoned the attempt to please Mrs. Brown.)

I don’t know why I liked to go there so much; it was damp and musty, and the benches could more properly be termed ledges than seats. And, being the St. Clair family church, it seemed some­times to be more like a private museum than the House of God; the place was full of memorials extolling their virtues as war­riors, statesmen, employers, parents, and patrons of the Arts. But mostly as warriors; there was even on display a tattered ban­ner said to have been taken at Ramillies. But it still remained the only place, outside of the bathroom, in which I couldn’t be got at, didn’t have to make any decisions, didn’t have to hear my father-in-law recommending me to Think Big or my mother-in-law explaining to my son that well-dressed people don’t have best clothes, because this implies that there are times when they wear in­ferior clothes; even if what I was hearing now didn’t make any sense at least it sounded as if it should make sense. Whatso­ever is born of God overcometh the world, and this is the victory that over­cometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?