Yet he had found the Silchester men who
came to visit the Mission easy enough to get on with. No doubt they,
without their background were themselves a little shy, although their
shyness never mastered them so far as to make them ill at ease. Here,
however, they seemed as imperturbable and unbending as the stone saints,
row upon row on the great West front of the Cathedral. Mark apprehended
more clearly than ever the powerful personality of Father Rowley when he
found that these noble young animals accorded to him the same quality of
respect that they gave to a popular master or even to a popular athlete.
The Missioner seemed able to understand their intimate and allusive
conversation, so characteristic of a small and highly developed society;
he seemed able to chaff them at the right moment; to take them seriously
when they ought to be taken seriously; in a word to have grasped without
being a Siltonian the secret of Silchester. He and Mark were staying at
a house which possessed super-imposed upon the Silchester tradition a
tradition of its own extending over the forty years during which the
Reverend William Jex Monkton had been a house master. It was difficult
for Mark, who had nothing but the traditions of Haverton House for a
standard to understand how with perfect respect the boys could address
their master by his second name without prejudice to discipline.
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