"But, Robert, dear, suppose our children should learn things from them that do not belong to culture and good breeding. As an example, Robbie came home the other day with an awful word, and when I asked him where he had got it, he said he had learned it from the McBreen boy on the back street."
"Then," said the rector, with an air of finality, "you should have seen the McBreen boy, and explained to him the naughtiness of the word, and requested him not to use it."
"So I did, and he replied that he had learned it from his father, and if his father had a right to use it he had, and he'd like to see any stuck-up preacher's wife stop him."
The rector laughed a little, and rose from the table.
"Oh, well," he said, "the principle holds good anyway. But we must apply it with judgment. We can spoil the best of our precepts by putting them into injudicious practice. And you always reach the end of an argument, Alice, by the ad absurdum route."
He looked at his watch and added:
"I think I'll go up to Mrs. Bradley's this morning. My afternoon is full, and the sooner the call is made the better."
But when he was ready to start, and had actually gotten to the hall-door, his wife called him back.
"Robert, dear," she said, "don't you think Ruth Tracy could do much better than I on that visit to Mrs. Bradley? I don't want to shirk any of the parish work, really I don't; but she is so much better adapted than I am to—to that sort of thing, you know; and she is so heartily in accord with your views on social equality and all that."
"Well, perhaps; we'll see. Don't let it bother you. Maybe we'll not get the opportunity to visit her anyway. I am only hoping that we shall."
But he could not help thinking, as he went down the steps and out to the street, how much more effectively
