or looked puzzled.

"I can't exactly explain what I mean," Michael went on.

"But they make me want to cry just because they aren't like anything.
You won't understand what I mean if I explain ever so much. Nobody
could. But when I see flowers on a lovely road like this, I get sort of
frightened whether God won't grow tired of bothering about human beings.
Because really, you know, Chator, there doesn't seem much good in our
being on the earth at all."

"I think that's a heresy," pronounced Chator. "I don't know which one,
but I'll ask Dom Cuthbert."

"I don't care if it is heresy. I believe it. Besides, religion must be
finding out things for yourself that have been found out already."

"Finding out for yourself," echoed Chator with a look of alarm. "I say,
you're an absolute Protestant."

"Oh, no I'm not," contradicted Michael. "I'm a Catholic."

"But you set yourself up above the Church."

"When did I?" demanded Michael.

"Just now."

"Because I said that harebells were ripping flowers?"

"You said a lot more than that," objected Chator.

"What did I say?" Michael parried.

"Well, I can't exactly remember what you said."

"Then what's the use of saying I'm a Protestant?" cried Michael in
triumph. "I think I'll play footer again next term," he added
inconsequently.

"I jolly well would," Chator agreed. "You ought to have played last
football term."

"Except that I like thinking," said Michael. "Which is rotten in the
middle of a game. It's jolly decent going to the monastery, isn't it? I
could keep walking on this road for ever without getting tired."

"We can ride again now," said Chator.

"Well, don't scorch, because we'll miss all the decent flowers if you
do," said Michael.

Then silently for awhile they breasted the slighter incline of the
summit.

"Only six weeks of these ripping holidays," Michael sighed. "And then
damned old school again."

"Hark!" shouted Chator suddenly. "I hear the Angelus."

Both boys dismounted and listened. Somewhere, indeed, a bell was
chiming, but a bell of such quality that the sound of it through the
summer was like a cuckoo's song in its unrelation to place. Michael and
Chator murmured their salute of the Incarnation, and perhaps for the
first time Michael half realized the mysterious condescension of God.
Here, high up on these downs, the Word became imaginable, a silence of
wind and sunlight.

"I say, Chator," Michael began.

"What?"

"Would you