Silchester was not the only place that Mark visited with Father Rowley.
It became a recognized custom for him to travel up to London whenever
the Missioner was preaching, and in London he was once more struck by
the variety of Father Rowley's worldly knowledge and secular friends.
One week-end will serve as a specimen of many. They left Chatsea on a
Saturday morning travelling up to town in a third class smoker full of
bluejackets and soldiers on leave. None of them happened to know the
Missioner, and for a time they talked surlily in undertones, evidently
viewing with distaste the prospect of having a Holy Joe in their
compartment all the way to London; but when Father Rowley pulled out his
pipe, for always when he was away from St. Agnes' he allowed himself the
privilege of smoking, and began to talk to them about their ships and
their regiments with unquestionable knowledge, they unbent, so that long
before Waterloo was reached it must have been the jolliest compartment
in the whole train. It was all done so easily, and yet without any of
that deliberate descent from a pedestal, which is the democratic manner
of so many parsons; there was none of that Friar Tuck style of
aggressive laymanhood, nor that subtler way of denying Christ (of course
with the best intentions) which consists of salting the conversation
with a few "damns" and peppering it with a couple of "bloodies" to show
that a parson may be what is called human.
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