“Didn’t you come over with Rowley?” he inquired.

Mark was going to explain that he was working at the Mission when it struck him that a Silchester man might have the right to resent that, and he gave no more than a simple affirmative.

“I remember seeing you at the Mission,” he went on.  “My name’s Hathorne.  Oh, well hit, sir, well hit!”

Hathorne’s approbation of the batsman made the match appear even more remote.  It was like the comment of a passer-by upon a well-designed figure in a tapestry.  It was an expression of his own aesthetic pleasure, and bore no relation to the player he applauded.

“I’ve only been down to the Mission once,” he continued, turning to Mark.  “I felt rather up against it there.”

“Well, I feel much more up against it in Silchester,” replied Mark.

“Yes, I can understand that,” Hathorne nodded.  “But you’re only up against form:  I was up against matter.  It struck me when I was down there what awful cheek it was for me to be calmly going down to Chatsea and supposing that I had a right to go there, because I had contributed a certain amount of money belonging to my father, to help spiritually a lot of people who probably need spiritual help much less than I do myself.  Of course, with anybody else except Rowley in charge the effect would be damnable.  As it is, he manages to keep us from feeling as if we’d paid to go and look at the Zoo.  You’re a lucky chap to be working there without the uncomfortable feeling that you’re just being tolerated because you’re a Siltonian.”

“I was thinking,” said Mark, “that I was only being tolerated here because I happened to come with Rowley.  It’s impossible to visit a place like this and not regret that one must remain an outsider.”

“It depends on what you want to do,” said Hathorne.  “I want to be a parson.  I’m going up to the Varsity in October, and I am beginning to wonder what on earth good I shall be at the end of it all.”

He gave Mark an opportunity to comment on this announcement; but Mark did not know what to say and remained silent.

“I see you’re not in the mood to be communicative,” Hathorne went on with a smile.  “I don’t blame you.  It’s impossible to be communicative in this place; but some time, when I’m down at the Mission again, I’d like to have what is called a heart-to-heart talk.  That was a good boundary.  We shall win quite comfortably.  So long!”

The tall, fair youth passed on; and although Mark never had that heart-to-heart talk with him in the Mission, because he was killed in a mountaineering accident in Switzerland that August, the memory of him sitting there under the oak tree on that fine summer afternoon remained with Mark for ever; and after that brief conversation he lost most of his shyness, so that he came to enjoy his visits to Silchester as much as the Missioner himself did.