It would have
been hard to explain the significance of that group, unless it were due
to some haphazard achievement of perfect form; yet somehow for Mark that
moment was taken from time and placed in eternity, so that whenever
afterward in his life he read about the Middle Ages he was able to be
what he read, merely by re-conjuring that monkish company in the shade
of that hawthorn tree.
On their way back to the Abbey Mark found himself walking with Mr.
Lamplugh, the ancient priest, who turned out to have known his father.
"Dear me, are you really the son of James Lidderdale? Why, I used to go
and preach at Lima Street in old days long before your father married.
And so you're Lidderdale's son. Now I wonder why you want to be a monk."
Mark gave an account of himself since he left school and tried to give
some good reasons why he was at Malford.
"And so you were with Rowley? Well, really you ought to know something
about missions by now. But perhaps you're tired of mission work
already?" the old priest inquired with a quick glance at Mark as if he
would see how much of the real stuff existed underneath that
probationer's cassock.
"This is an active Order, isn't it?" Mark countered. "Of course, I'm not
tired of mission work.
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