ratify my own vanity, which of course would be perfectly true. Luckily
I'm of a retiring disposition, and I don't want to do anything to help
the ten thousand benighted parishioners of Saint Agnes', except
indirectly by striving to help in my own feeble way the man who really
is helping them. Now don't throw that inkpot at me, because the room's
quite dirty enough already, and as I've made you sit still for five
minutes I've achieved something this evening that mighty few people
have achieved in Keppel Street. I believe the only time you really rest
is in the confessional box."

"Mark Anthony, Mark Anthony," said the priest, "you talk a great deal
too much. Come along now, it's bedtime."

One of the rules of the Mission House was that every inmate should be in
bed by ten o'clock and all lights out by a quarter past. The day began
with Mass at seven o'clock at which everybody was expected to be
present; and from that time onward everybody was so fully occupied that
it was essential to go to bed at a reasonable hour. Guests who came down
for a night or two were often apt to forget how much the regular workers
had to do and what a tax it put upon the willing servants to manage a
house of which nobody could say ten minutes before a meal how many would
sit down to it, nor even until lights out for how many people beds must
be made. In case any guest should forget this rule by coming back after
ten o'clock, Father Rowley made a point of having the front door bell to
ring in his bedroom, so that he might get out of bed at any hour of the
night and admit the loiterer. Guests were warned what would be the
effect of their lack of consideration, and it was seldom that Father
Rowley was disturbed.

Among the guests there was one class of which a representative was
usually to be found at the Mission House. This was the drunken
clergyman, which sounds as if there was at this date a high proportion
of drunken clergymen in the Church of England; but which means that when
one did come to St. Agnes' he usually stayed for a long time, because he
would in most cases have been sent there when everybody else had
despaired of him to see what Father Rowley could effect.

About the time when Mark was beginning to be recognized as Father
Rowley's personal vassal, it happened that the Reverend George Edward
Mousley who had been handed on from diocese to diocese during the last
five years had lately reached the Mission House. For more than two