seeing any connexion between dogmatic teaching and a gramophone, Doe
looked so amazed that Monty laughed, and grumbled:

"It's fine priestly work I'm doing for these lads, isn't it? Work
any hospital orderly could do. I ought to be hearing their
confessions, and saying Mass for them. Instead I play them 'Kitty,
Kitty, isn't it a pity--?' But they don't understand--they don't
understand."

"But, gracious heavens," said Doe, "you can't be always doing
priestly work. And we know to our sorrow that you do have sing-song
services sometimes. Why, last night you had at least a couple of
hundred bawling hymns at the tops of their voices, and making the
night hideous. Wasn't that priestly enough?"

"No," he snapped. "It was a service any layman or hot-gospeller
could hold. There they were--a mass of bonny lads, all calling
themselves 'C. of E.,' and none of them knowing anything about the
Mass or confession. Ah, they don't understand. It breaks my heart,
Rupert. All sons of the Church; and they don't know the lines of
their mother's face!"

"Well, why on earth," said Doe, impatiently, "do you run your
beastly gramophone and your rousing services, if they're not your
proper work?"

"Why, don't you see?" murmured Monty, turning away to watch the sun
setting behind a sweep of violet hills, "I _must_ pull my weight. I
can feel patriotic at times. And, if I can't be a priest to the big
majority, I can at least be their pal. That's how a padre's work
pans out: a priest to the tiny few, and a pal to the big majority. I
suppose it's something. Perhaps it's something."

Sec.2

It was Monty who first called Mudros, "The Green Room." The name was
happily chosen, for here at Mudros the actors either prepared for
their entry on the Gallipoli stage, or returned for a breather, till
the call-boy should summon them again. In it, after the manner of
green rooms, we discussed how the show in the limelight was going.
We saw much that made us gossip.

We saw the huge black transports bear into Mudros Bay. Many were
ships that were the pride of this watery planet. Like a duchess
sailing into a ball-room came the _Mauretania_, making the mere
professional warships and the common merchantmen look very small
indeed. But even she, haughty lady, was put in the shade, when her
young but gargantuan sister, the _Aquitania_, floating leisurely
between the booms, claimed the attention of the harbour, and reduced
us all to a state of grovelling