lence is that you may ask necessary
questions and get necessary replies during simple silence; but as
far as I can make out, during solemn silence you wouldn't be
allowed to tell anybody that you were dying, or if you did tell
anybody, he wouldn't be able to do anything about it until solemn
silence was over.

The other monks are Brother Jerome, the senior novice after Brother
Dunstan, a pious but rather dull young man with fair hair and a
squashed face, and Brother Raymond, attractive and bird-like, and
considered a great Romanizer by the others. There is also Brother
Walter, who is only a probationer and is not even allowed wide
sleeves and a habit like Brother Lawrence, but has to wear a very
moth-eaten cassock with a black band tied round it. Brother Walter
had been marketing in High Thorpe (I wonder what the Bishop of
Silchester thought if he saw him in the neighbourhood of the
episcopal castle!) and having lost himself on the way home he had
arrived back late for Vespers and was tremendously teased by the
others in consequence. Brother Walter is a tall excitable awkward
creature with black hair that sticks up on end and wide-open
frightened eyes. His cassock is much too short for him both in the
arms and in the legs; and as he has very large hands and very large
feet, his hands and feet look still larger in consequence. They
didn't talk about much that was interesting during recreation.
Brother Dunstan and Brother Raymond were full of monkish jokes, at
all of which Brother Walter laughed in a very high voice--so loudly
once that Brother Jerome asked him if he would mind making less
noise, as he was reading Montalembert's Monks of the West, at which
Brother Walter fell into an abashed gloom.

I asked who the visitor in the ante-chapel was and was told that he
was a Sir Charles Horner who owns the whole of Malford and who has
presented the Order with the thirty acres on which the Abbey is
built. Sir Charles is evidently an ecclesiastically-minded person
and, I should imagine, rather pleased to be able to be the patron
of a monastic order.

I will write you again when I have seen Father Burrowes. For the
moment I'm inclined to think that Malford is rather playing at
being monks; but as I said, the bigwigs are all away. Brother
Dunst