ho disregard this rule. There
happens to be a play by one Euripides called the Alcestis. I suggest you
write me out the first two hundred lines of it."

Michael's next encounter was with Mr. Viner, on the occasion of his
producing in the priest's pipe-seasoned sitting-room a handkerchief
inordinately perfumed with an Eastern scent lately discovered by Wilmot.

"Good heavens, Michael, what Piccadilly breezes are you wafting into my
respectable and sacerdotal apartment?"

"I rather like scent," explained Michael lamely.

"Well, I don't, so, for goodness' sake don't bring any more of it in
here. Pah! Phew! It's worse than a Lenten address at a fashionable
church. Really, you know, these people you're in with now are not at all
good for you, Michael."

"They're more interesting than any of the chaps at school."

"Are they? There used to be a saying in my undergraduate days, 'Distrust
a freshman that's always seen with third-year men.' No doubt the
inference is often unjust, but still the proverb remains."

"Ah, but these people aren't at school with me," Michael observed.

"No, I wish they were. They might be licked into better shape, if they
were," retorted the priest.

"I think you're awfully down on Wilmot just because I didn't meet him in
some churchy set. If it comes to that, I met some much bigger rotters
than him at Clere."

"My dear Michael," argued Father Viner, "the last place I should have
been surprized to see Master Wilmot would be in a churchy set. Don't
forget that if religion is a saving grace, religiosity is a
constitutional weakness. Can't you understand that a priest like myself
who has taken the average course, public-school, 'varsity, and
theological college, meets a thundering lot of Wilmots by the way? My
dear fellow, many of my best friends, many of the priests you've met in
my rooms, were once upon a time every bit as decadent as the lilified
Wilmot. They took it like scarlet fever or chicken-pox, and feel all the
more secure now for having had it. Decadence, as our friend knows it, is
only a new-fangled name for green-sickness. It's a healthy enough mental
condition for the young, but it's confoundedly dangerous for the
grown-up. The first pretty girl that looks his way cures it in a boy, if
he's a normal decent boy. I shouldn't offer any objection to your
behaviour, if you were being decadent with Mark Chator or Martindale or
Rigg. Good heavens, the senior curate at the best East-end Mi