'Not often. Sometimes a St. Ursula girl gets a room in the town for me.
I have coached two or three of them at little reading parties. It gets
one out of town in autumn: Bloomsbury in August is not very fresh. And
at Oxford one can "tout," or "cadge," for a little work. But there are
so many of us.'

'What are you busy with just now?'

'Vatican transcripts at the Record Office.'

'Any exciting secrets?'

'Oh no, only how much the priests here paid to Rome for their promotions.
Secrets then perhaps: not thrilling now.'

'No schemes to poison people?'

'Not yet: no plots for novels, and oh, such long-winded pontifical Latin,
and such awful crabbed hands.'

'It does not seem to lead to much?'

'To nothing, in no way. But one is glad to get anything.'

'Jephson, of Lincoln, whom I used to know, is doing a book on the Knights
of St. John in their Relations to the Empire,' said Merton.

'Is he?' said Miss Willoughby, after a scarcely distinguishable but
embarrassed pause, and she turned from Merton to exhibit an interest in
the very original scheme of mural decoration behind her.