When they came back
and were sitting round the breakfast table, this young man simpered in a
ladylike voice:
"Oh, Father, couldn't you keep your fingers closed when you give the
_Dominus vobiscum_?"
"Et cum spiritu tuo," shouted Father Rowley. "I can keep my fingers
closed when I box your ears."
And he proved it.
It was a real box on the ears, so hard a blow that the ladylike young
man burst into tears to the great indignation of a Chief Petty Officer
staying in the Mission House, who declared that he was half in a mind to
catch the young swab such a snitch on the conk as really would give him
something to blubber about. Father Rowley evidently had no remorse for
his violence, and the young man went away that afternoon saying how
sorry he was that the legend of the good work being done at St. Agnes'
had been so much exaggerated.
Mark wrote an account of this incident, which had given him intense
pleasure, to Mr. Ogilvie. Perhaps the Rector was afraid that Mark in his
ambition to avoid "churchiness" was inclining toward the opposite
extreme; or perhaps, charitable and saintly man though he was, he felt a
pang of jealousy at Mark's unbounded admiration of his new friend; or
perhaps it was merely that the east wind was blowing more sharply than
usual that morning over the wold into the Rectory garden.
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