At a quarter to five the bell rang for tea.  Simple silence was relaxed, and the brethren enjoyed their recreation until six-fifteen when the bell rang for a quarter of an hour’s solemn silence before Vespers.  Supper was eaten after Vespers, and after supper, which was finished about eight o’clock, there was reading and recreation until the bell rang for Compline at nine-fifteen.  This office said, solemn silence was not broken until the response to the dominus vobiscum in the morning.  The rule of simple silence was not kept very strictly at this period.  Two brethren working in the garden in these hot July days found that permitted conversation about the immediate matter in hand, say the whereabouts of a trowel or a hoe, was easily extended into observations about the whereabouts of Brother So-and-So during Terce or the way Brother Somebody-else was late with the antiphon.  From the little incidents of the Abbey’s daily round the conversation was easily extended into a discussion of the policy of the Order in general.  Speculations where the Reverend Father was preaching that evening or that morning and whether his offertories would be as large during the summer as they had been during the spring were easily amplified from discussions about the general policy of the Order into discussions about the general policy of Christendom, the pros and cons of the Roman position, the disgraceful latitudinarianism of bishops and deans; and still more widely amplified from remarks upon the general policy of Christendom into arguments about the universe and the great philosophies of humanity.  Thus Mark, who was an ardent Platonist, would find himself at odds with Brother Jerome who was an equally ardent Aristotelian, while the weeds, taking advantage of the philosophic contest, grew faster than ever.

Whatever may have been Brother Dunstan’s faults of indulgence, they sprang from a debonair and kindly personality which shone like a sun upon the little family and made everybody good-humoured, even Brother Lawrence, who was apt to be cross because he had been kept a postulant longer than he expected.  But perhaps the happiest of all was Brother Walter, who though still a probationer was now the senior probationer, a status which afforded him the most profound satisfaction and gave him a kindly feeling toward Mark who was the cause of promotion.

“And the Reverend Father has promised me that I shall be clothed as a postulant on August 10th when Brother Lawrence is to be clothed as a novice.  The thought makes me so excited that I hardly know what to do sometimes, and I still don’t know what saint’s name I’m going to take.  You see, there was some mystery about my birth, and I was called Walter because I was found by a policeman in Walter Street, and as ill-luck would have it there’s no St. Walter.  Of course, I know I have a very wide choice of names, but that is what makes it so difficult.  I had rather a fancy to be Peter, but he’s such a very conspicuous saint that