tarted too young," the Monsignor went on, not unkindly; "it's
all come on in such a hurry; he ought to have had a country mission
first. But my predecessor thought he'd be so safe with you."

"But how can I help it?" asked the other hotly; "I'm sure I've done my
best! You can ask him if I haven't warned him from his very first sermon
that he'd be a popular preacher. I've even tried to teach him to preach.
I've lent him Challoner, and Hay, and Wiseman, and tried to get him out
of his Oxford notions, but he's no sooner in the pulpit than he's off at
a hard gallop--three hundred words to a minute, and such
words!--'vitality,' 'personality,' 'development,' 'recrudescence,'
'mentality'--the Lord knows what! And there they sit and gaze at him
with their mouths open drinking it in as if they'd been starved! No, no;
it won't be my fault if he turns out another Nobbs--poor, miserable old
Nobbs! Now his really were sermons!"

"Well," said the other, in a business-like tone, "I am inclined to think
it would be best for him to take a country mission for a few years. I've
no doubt he is on the square now, and that will give him time to quiet
down a bit. He'll be an older and a wiser man after that, and he could
do some sound, theological reading. Lord Lofton has been asking for a
chaplain, and we must send him a gentleman. I could tell him that
Molyneux had been a little overworked in London, and if he goes down to
the Towers at the end of July, no one will suppose he is leaving for
good, eh?"

"Very well," answered the Rector; "I don't want anything said against
him, you know. I've had many a curate not half as ready to work as this
man."

"No, no; I quite understand. Well, I'll write to him in the course of
the week. And now about this point of plain chant?" And both men forgot
the existence of Mark as they waxed hot on melodious questions.

I can't believe that Jonathan loved David more than the second curate
had come to love Mark Molyneux in their work together. It is good to
bear the yoke in youth, and it is very good to have a hero worship for
your yoke fellow. Father Jack Marny was a young Kelt, blue-eyed,
straight-limbed, fair-haired, and very fair of soul. He would have told
any sympathetic listener that he owed everything to Mark--zeal for
souls, habits of self-denial, a new view of life, even enjoyment of
pictures and of Browning, as well as interest in social science. All
this was gross exaggeration, but in him it