little ceremony of reception was
carried through in Chapter before the brethren went into the Oratory to
say Terce, and Brother Walter was so much excited when he heard himself
addressed as Brother Simon that for a moment it seemed doubtful if he
would be sufficiently calm to attend the profession of Brother Anselm at
the conventual Mass. However, during the clothing of Brother Lawrence as
a novice Brother Simon quieted down, and even gave over counting the
three knots in the rope with which he had been girdled. Ordinarily,
Brother Lawrence would have been clothed after Mass, but this morning it
was felt that such a ceremony coming after the profession of Brother
Anselm would be an anti-climax, and it was carried through in Chapter.
It took Brother Lawrence all he had ever heard and read about humility
and obedience not to protest at the way his clothing on his own saint's
day, for which he had been made to wait nearly a year, was being carried
through in such a hole in the corner fashion. But he fixed his mind upon
the torments of the blessed archdeacon on the gridiron and succeeded in
keeping his temper.

Mark felt that the profession of Brother Anselm lost some of its dignity
by the absence of Brother George and Brother Birinus, the only other
professed members of the Order apart from Father Burrowes himself. It
struck him as slightly ludicrous that a few young novices and postulants
should represent the venerable choir-monks whom one pictured at such a
ceremony from one's reading of the Rule of St. Benedict. Moreover,
Father Burrowes never presented himself to Mark's imagination as an
authentic abbot. Nor indeed was he such. Malford Abbey was a courtesy
title, and such monastic euphemisms as the Abbot's Parlour and the
Abbot's Lodgings to describe the matchboarded apartments sacred to the
Father Superior, while they might please such ecclesiastical enthusiasts
as Brother Raymond, appealed to Mark as pretentious and somewhat silly.
In fact, if it had not been for the presence of the Bishop of Alberta in
cope and mitre Mark would have found it hard, when after Terce the
brethren assembled in the Chapter-room to hear Brother Anselm make his
final petition, to believe in the reality of what was happening, to
believe, when Brother Anselm in reply to the Father Superior's
exhortation chose the white cowl and scapular (which in the Order of St.
George differentiated the professed monk from the novice) and rejected
the suit