e struck by
the variety of Father Rowley's worldly knowledge and secular friends.
One week-end will serve as a specimen of many. They left Chatsea on a
Saturday morning travelling up to town in a third class smoker full of
bluejackets and soldiers on leave. None of them happened to know the
Missioner, and for a time they talked surlily in undertones, evidently
viewing with distaste the prospect of having a Holy Joe in their
compartment all the way to London; but when Father Rowley pulled out his
pipe, for always when he was away from St. Agnes' he allowed himself the
privilege of smoking, and began to talk to them about their ships and
their regiments with unquestionable knowledge, they unbent, so that long
before Waterloo was reached it must have been the jolliest compartment
in the whole train. It was all done so easily, and yet without any of
that deliberate descent from a pedestal, which is the democratic manner
of so many parsons; there was none of that Friar Tuck style of
aggressive laymanhood, nor that subtler way of denying Christ (of course
with the best intentions) which consists of salting the conversation
with a few "damns" and peppering it with a couple of "bloodies" to show
that a parson may be what is called human. Father Rowley was simply
himself; and a month later two of the bluejackets in that compartment
and one of the soldiers were regular visitors to the Mission House, and
what is more regular visitors to the Blessed Sacrament.

They reached London soon after midday and went to lunch at a restaurant
in Jermyn Street famous for a Russian salad that Father Rowley sometimes
spoke of with affection in Chatsea. After lunch they went to a matinee
of _Pelleas and Melisande_, the Missioner having been given two stalls
by an actor friend. Mark enjoyed the play and was being stirred by the
imagination of old, unhappy, far off things until his companion began to
laugh. Several clever women who looked as if they had been dragged
through a hedge said "Hush!"; even Mark, compassionate of the players'
feelings should they hear Father Rowley laugh at the poignant nonsense
they were uttering on the stage, begged him to control himself.

"But this is most unending rubbish," he said. "I've never heard anything
so ridiculous in my life. Terrible."

The curtain fell on the act at this moment, so that Father Rowley was
able to give louder voice to his opinions.

"This is unspeakable bosh," he repeated. "I can't unders