see the heights to
which Father Rowley has raised me."

CHAPTER XVIII

SILCHESTER COLLEGE MISSION

It was never allowed to be forgotten at St. Agnes' that the Mission was
the Silchester College Mission; and there were few days in the year on
which it was possible to visit the Mission House without finding there
some member of the College past or present. Every Sunday during term two
or three prefects would sit down to dinner; masters turned up during the
holidays; even the mighty Provost himself paid occasional visits, during
which he put off most of his majesty and became as nearly human as a
facetious judge. Nor did Father Rowley allow Silchester to forget that
it had a Mission. He was not at all content with issuing a half yearly
report of progress and expenses, and he had no intention of letting St.
Agnes' exist as a subject for an occasional school sermon or a religious
tax levied on parents. From the first moment he had put foot in Chatsea
he had done everything he could to make St. Agnes' be what it was
supposed to be--the Silchester College Mission. He was particularly
anxious that the new church should be built and beautified with money
from Silchester sources, even if he also accepted money for this purpose
from outside. Soon after Mark had become recognized as Father Rowley's
confidential secretary, he visited Silchester for the first time in his
company.

It was the custom during the summer for the various guilds and clubs
connected with the parish to be entertained in turn at the College. It
had never happened that Mark had accompanied any of these outings, which
in the early days of St. Agnes' had been regarded with dread by the
College authorities, so many flowers were picked, so much fruit was
stolen, but which now were as orderly and respectable excursions as you
could wish to see. Mark's first visit to Silchester was on the occasion
of Father Rowley's terminal sermon in the June after he was nineteen. He
found the experience intimidating, because he was not yet old enough to
have learnt self-confidence and he had never passed through the ordeal
either of a first term at a public school or of a first term at the
University. Boys are always critical, and at Silchester with the
tradition of six hundred years to give them a corporate self-confidence,
the judgment of outsiders is more severe than anywhere in the world,
unless it might be in the New Hebrides. Added to their critical regard
was a