should look like, but I suppose it is the most practicable building
that could be erected with the amount of money that the Order had
to spare for what in a way is a luxury for a working order like
this. What it most resembles is three tin tabernacles put together
to form three sides of a square, the fourth and empty side of which
is by far the most beautiful, because it consists of a glorious
view over a foreground of woods, a middle-distance of park land,
and on the horizon the Hampshire downs.

I am an authority on this view, because I had to gaze at it for
about a quarter of an hour while I was waiting for somebody to open
the Abbey door. At last the porter, Brother Lawrence, after taking
a good look at me through the grill, demanded what I wanted. When I
said that I wanted to be a monk, he looked very alarmed and hurried
away, leaving me to gaze at that view for another ten minutes. He
came back at last and let me in, informing me in a somewhat
adenoidish voice that the Reverend Brother was busy in the garden
and asking me to wait until he came in. Brother Lawrence has a
large, pock-marked face, and while he is talking to anybody he
stands with his right hand in his left sleeve and his left hand in
his right sleeve like a Chinese mandarin or an old washer-woman
with her arms folded under her apron. You must make the most of my
descriptions in this letter, because if I am accepted as a
probationer I shan't be able to indulge in any more personalities
about my brethren.

The guest-room like everything else in the monastery is
match-boarded; and while I was waiting in it the noise was
terrific, because some corrugated iron was being nailed on the roof
of a building just outside. I began to regret that Brother Lawrence
had opened the door at all and that he had not left me in the
cloisters, as by the way I discovered that the space enclosed by
the three tin tabernacles is called! There was nothing to read in
the guest-room except one sheet of a six months' old newspaper
which had been spread on the table presumably for a guest to mend
something with glue. At last the Reverend Brother, looking most
beautiful in a white habit with a zucchetto of mauve velvet, came
in and welcomed me with much friendliness. I was surprised to find
somebody s