“Oh, Brother Dominic was all right.  Don’t you try and make me criticize Brother Dominic.  He bought the gloves and I did the fighting.  Good man of business was Brother D. I wish we could have some boxing here.  Half the brethren want punching about in my opinion.  Old Brother Jerome’s face is squashed flat like a prize-fighter’s, but I bet he’s never had the gloves on in his life.  I’m fond of old Brother J. But, my word, wouldn’t I like to punch into him when he gives us that pea-soup more than four times a week.  Chronic, I call it.  Well, if he doesn’t give us a jolly good blow out on my name-day next week I really will punch into him.  Old Brother Flatface, as I called him the other day.  And he wasn’t half angry either.  Didn’t we have sport last second of May!  I took a party of them all round Hythe and Folkestone.  No end of a spree!”

Mark was soon too much occupied with his duties as guestmaster to lament with Brother Athanasius the end of the Sandgate priory.  The Reverend Father’s drawing-room addresses were sending fresh visitors down every week to see for themselves the size of the foundation that required money, and more money, and more money still to keep it going.  In the old Chatsea days guests who visited the Mission House were expected to provide entertainment for their hosts.  It mattered not who they were, millionaires or paupers, parsons or laymen, undergraduates or board-school boys, they had to share the common table, face the common teasing, and help the common task.  Here at the Abbey, although the guests had much more opportunity of intercourse with the brethren than would have been permitted in a less novel monastic house, they were definitely guests, from whom nothing was expected beyond observance of the rules for guests.  They were of all kinds, from the distinguished lay leaders of the Catholic party to young men who thought emotionally of joining the Order.

Mark tried to conduct himself as impersonally as possible, and in doing so he managed to impress all the visitors with being a young man intensely preoccupied with his vocation, and as such to be treated with gravity and a certain amount of deference.  Mark himself was anxious not to take advantage of his position, and make friends with people that otherwise he might not have met.  Had he been sure that he was going to remain in the Order of St. George, he would have allowed himself a greater liberty of intercourse, because he would not then have been afraid of one day seeing these people in the world.  He desired to be forgotten when they left the Abbey, or if he was remembered to be remembered only as a guestmaster who tried to make the Monastery guests comfortable, who treated them with courtesy, but also with reserve.