said: "Lestrange is perfectly right, and you would think so too, if only he
could give what he said a more secular twist. 'Be soople in things
immaterial,' Lestrange, as the minister says in _Kidnapped_." "But who
is to judge if it _is_ immaterial?" said Lestrange rather
pertinaciously. "It mostly is," said Father Payne. "Anything is better than
being shocked! It's better to be ashamed afterwards of not speaking up than
to feel you have made a circle uncomfortable. You must not rebuke people
unless you really hate doing it. If you like doing it, you may be pretty
sure that it is vanity; a Christian ought not to feel out of place in a
smoking-room!"

The whole thing did not take more than three-quarters of an hour. Coffee
was brought in, very strong and good. Some of the party went off, and
Father Payne disappeared. I went to the smoking-room with two of the men,
and we talked a little. Finally I went away to my room, and tried to commit
my impressions of the whole thing to my diary before I went to bed. It
certainly seemed a happy life, and I was struck with the curious mixture of
freedom, frankness, and yet courtesy about the whole. There was no
roughness or wrangling or stupidity, nor had I any sense either of
exclusion, or of being elaborately included in the life of the circle. I
would call the atmosphere brotherly, if brotherliness did not often mean
the sort of frankness which is so unpleasant to strangers. There certainly
was an atmosphere about it, and I felt too that Father Payne, for all his
easiness, had somehow got the reins in his hands.

The next morning I went down to breakfast, which was, I found, like
breakfast at a club, as Vincent had said. It was a plain meal--cold bacon,
a vast dish of scrambled eggs kept hot by a spirit lamp and a hot-water
arrangement. You could make toast for yourself if you wished, and there was
a big fresh loaf, with excellent butter, marmalade, and jam--not an ascetic