“Have you any flowers in the garden for St. Joseph?” asked Brother Raymond, who was sacristan.

“A few daffodils, that’s all,” Brother Giles replied.

“Oh, I don’t think that St. Joseph would like daffodils,” exclaimed Brother Raymond.  “He’s so fond of white flowers, isn’t he?”

“Good gracious!” the Prior thundered.  “Are we a girls’ school or a company of able-bodied men?”

“Well, St. Joseph is always painted with lilies, Reverend Brother,” said the sacristan, rather sulkily.

He disapproved of the way the Prior treated what he called his pet saints.

“We’re not an agricultural college either,” he added in an undertone to Brother Dunstan, who shook his finger and whispered “hush.”

“I doubt if we ought to keep St. Joseph’s Day,” said the Prior truculently.  There was nothing he enjoyed better on these Sunday afternoons than showing his contempt for ecclesiasticism.

“Reverend Brother!” gasped Brother Dunstan.  “Not keep St. Joseph’s Day?”

“He’s not in our calendar,” Brother George argued.  “If we’re going to keep St. Joseph, why not keep St. Alo—­what’s his name and Philip Neri and Anthony of Padua and Bernardine of Sienna and half-a-dozen other Italian saints?”

“Why not?” asked Brother Raymond.  “At any rate we have to keep my patron, who was a dear, even if he was a Spaniard.”

The Prior looked as if he were wondering if there was a clause in the Rule that forbade a prior to throw anything within reach at an imbecile sacristan.

“I don’t think you can put St. Joseph in the same class as the saints you have just mentioned,” pompously interposed Brother Jerome, who was cellarer nowadays and fancied that the continued existence of the Abbey depended on himself.

“Until you can learn to harness a pair of horses to the plough,” said the Prior, “your opinions on the relative importance of Roman saints will not be accepted.”

“I’ve never been used to horses,” said Brother Jerome.

“And you have been used to saints?” the Prior laughed, raising his eyebrows.

Brother Jerome was silent.

“Well, Brother Lawrence, what do you say?”

Brother Lawrence stuck out his lower jaw and assumed the expression of the good boy in a Sunday School class.

“St. Joseph was the foster-father of Our Blessed Lord, Reverend Brother,” he said primly.  “I think it would be most disrespectful both to Our Blessed Lord and to Our Blessed Lady if we didn’t keep his feast-day, though I am sure St. Joseph would have no objection to daffodils.  No objections at all.  His whole life and character show him to have been a man of the greatest humility and forbearance.”

The Prior rocked with laughter.  This was the kind of speech that sometimes rewarded his teasing.

“We always kept St. Joseph’s day at the Visitation, Hornsey,” Brother Nicholas volunteered.  “In fact we always made it a great feature.  We found it came as such a relief in Lent.”