Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/91

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THE DAY-DREAMER
79

of his beliefs at all? She had heard that the University education had a tendency to make boys irreligious. Oh, Don had not said anything, but she was afraid that there was something wrong. She had not felt able. Would he speak to Don?

He would. And he did.

He did it with the cleverness of a mind skilled in betraying witnesses into admissions which they did not wish to make—betraying them not by brow-beating and bewildering them with questions, but by an insinuating friendliness and a flattering attention to their involved replies. He began by congratulating Don on his attendance at church (whither the boy had gone because he knew that to remain away would be to give his mother pain). So many University men, Mr. Gregg had noticed, made a license of their college liberty in order to escape their church duties. It was a great mistake—a mistake which they always regretted later in life. A man depended on his fellow-men for a living in the organized union which we call society; and the church was an organization within the larger body, an organization primarily for worship on the lines of a common belief——

"But," Don interrupted, feeling the intolerable hypocrisy of his silence, "there are things one can't believe in."

"Certainly," his father assented, with no change of voice. "There are government policies that I do not believe in, but I do not therefore revolt against the will of the majority. A man may not believe in capital punishment, but he need not break open the