“I, Mark Lidderdale, about to be admitted to the Holy Order of Deacons, do solemnly make the following declaration:—­I assent to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, and to the Book of Common Prayer, and the ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.  I believe the doctrine of the Church of England, as therein set forth, to be agreeable to the Word of God; and in Public Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments I will use the Form in the said Book prescribed, and none other, except so far as shall be ordered by lawful authority.

“I, Mark Lidderdale, about to be admitted to the Holy Order of Deacons, do swear that I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to His Majesty King Edward, his heirs and successors according to law.

“So help me God.”

“But the strange thing is,” Mark said to one of his fellow candidates, “nobody asks us to take the oath of allegiance to God.”

“We do that when we’re baptized,” said the other, a serious young man who feared that Mark was being flippant.

“Personally,” Mark concluded, “I think the solemn profession of a monk speaks more directly to the soul.”

And this was the feeling that Mark had throughout the Ordination of the Deacons notwithstanding that the Bishop of Silchester in cope and mitre was an awe-inspiring figure in his own Chapel.  But when Mark heard him say: 

     Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Priest in the
     Church of God,

he was caught up to the Seventh Heaven and prayed that, when a year hence he should be kneeling thus to hear those words uttered to him and to feel upon his head those hands imposed, he should receive the Holy Ghost more worthily than lately he had received authority to execute the office of a Deacon in the Church of God.

Suddenly at the back of the chapel Mark caught sight of Miriam, who must have travelled down from Oxfordshire last night to be present at his Ordination.  His mind went back to that Whit-Sunday in Meade Cantorum nearly ten years ago.  Miriam’s plume of grey hair was no longer visible, for all her hair was grey nowadays; but her face had scarcely altered, and she sat there at this moment with that same expression of austere sweetness which had been shed like a benison upon Mark’s dreary boyhood.  How dear of Miriam to grace his Ordination, and if only Esther too could have been with him!  He knelt down to thank God humbly for His mercies, and of those mercies not least for the Ogilvies’ influence upon his life.

Mark could not find Miriam when they came out from the chapel.  She must have hurried away to catch some slow Sunday train that would get her back to Wych-on-the-Wold to-night.  She could not have known that he had seen her, and when he arrived at the Rectory to-morrow as glossy as a beetle in his new clerical attire, Miriam would listen to his account of the Ordination, and only when he had finished would she murmur how she had been present all the time.