When Mark went home
that afternoon, he searched among his grandfather's books until he found
the story of St. Tugdual who, it seemed, was a holy man in Brittany, so
holy that he was summoned to be Pope of Rome. When he had been Pope for
a few months, an angel appeared to him and said that he must come back
at once to Brittany, because since he went to Rome all the women were
become barren.
"But how am I to go back all the way from Rome to Brittany?" St. Tugdual
asked.
"I have a white horse waiting for you," the angel replied.
And sure enough there was a beautiful white horse with wings, which
carried St. Tugdual back to Brittany in a few minutes.
"What does it mean when a woman becomes barren?" Mark inquired of his
mother.
"It means when she does not have any more children, darling," said Mrs.
Lidderdale, who did not believe in telling lies about anything.
And because she answered her son simply, her son did not perplex himself
with shameful speculations, but was glad that St. Tugdual went back home
so that the women of Brittany were able to have children again.
Everything was simple at Nancepean except the parishioners; but Mark was
still too young and too simple himself to apprehend their complicacy.
The simplest thing of all was the Vicar's religion, and at an age when
for most children religion means being dressed up to go into the
drawing-room and say how d'you do to God, Mark was allowed to go to
church in his ordinary clothes and after church to play at whatever he
wanted to play, so that he learned to regard the assemblage of human
beings to worship God as nothing more remarkable than the song of birds.
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