“Well,” said the other, in a business-like tone, “I am inclined to think it would be best for him to take a country mission for a few years.  I’ve no doubt he is on the square now, and that will give him time to quiet down a bit.  He’ll be an older and a wiser man after that, and he could do some sound, theological reading.  Lord Lofton has been asking for a chaplain, and we must send him a gentleman.  I could tell him that Molyneux had been a little overworked in London, and if he goes down to the Towers at the end of July, no one will suppose he is leaving for good, eh?”

“Very well,” answered the Rector; “I don’t want anything said against him, you know.  I’ve had many a curate not half as ready to work as this man.”

“No, no; I quite understand.  Well, I’ll write to him in the course of the week.  And now about this point of plain chant?” And both men forgot the existence of Mark as they waxed hot on melodious questions.

I can’t believe that Jonathan loved David more than the second curate had come to love Mark Molyneux in their work together.  It is good to bear the yoke in youth, and it is very good to have a hero worship for your yoke fellow.  Father Jack Marny was a young Kelt, blue-eyed, straight-limbed, fair-haired, and very fair of soul.  He would have told any sympathetic listener that he owed everything to Mark—­zeal for souls, habits of self-denial, a new view of life, even enjoyment of pictures and of Browning, as well as interest in social science.  All this was gross exaggeration, but in him it was quite truthful, for he really thought so.  He had the run of Mark’s room, and they took turns to smoke in each other’s bedrooms, so as to take turns in bearing the rector’s observations on the smell of smoke on the upstairs landing.  Father Marny had a subscription at Mudie’s—­his only extravagance—­and he always ordered the books he thought Mark wished for, and Mark always ordered from the London library the books he thought would most interest Jack.  Father Marny revelled in secret in the thought of all that might have belonged to Mark, and he possessed, of course most carefully concealed, a wonderful old print he had picked up on a counter, of Groombridge Castle, exalting the round towers to a preposterous height, while in the foreground strolled ladies in vast hoops, and some animals intended apparently for either cows or sheep according to the fancy of the purchaser.

But what each of the curates loved best was the goodness he discerned in the other, and the more intimate they became the more goodness they discerned.  The very genuinely good see good, and provoke good by seeing it, and reflect it back again, as two looking-glasses opposite to each other repeat each other’s light ad infinitum.

It was a Monday, and the rector had gone out to dinner, and the two young men were smoking in the general sitting-room.  Father Marny was looking over the accounts of a boot club, and objurating the handwriting of the lady who kept them.  Mark was in the absolutely passive state to which some hard-working people can reduce themselves; he had hardly the energy to smoke.  A loud knock produced no effect upon him.