ting it. This book tells of the Pelican that she is a
peevish bird and so hasty of temper that, when her young ones molest
her, she kills them with her beak; and soon after, being sorry, she
moans, smites her own breast with the same murderous beak, and so
draws blood, with which (says the Bishop) 'she then quickeneth her
slain birds.' But I, being no believer in miracles, think he is
right as to the repentance but errs about the bringing back to life.
In this world, Brother, that doesn't happen; and we poor angry devils
are left wishing that it could."

Brother Warboise, playing with knife and fork, looked up sharply from
under fierce eyebrows.

"The moral?" pursued Brother Copas. "There are two at least: the
first, that here we are, two jolly Protestants, who might be as
comfortable as rats in a cheese--you conscious of a duty performed,
and I filled with admiration of your pluck--and lo! when old Biscoe
annoys us by an act of petty spite, we turn, not on him, but on one
another. You, already more angry with yourself than with Biscoe,
suddenly take offence with me because I didn't join you in standing
between a good man and his dinner; while I, with a spoilt meal of my
own for a grievance, choose to feel an irrational concern for the
Master's, turn round on my comrade who has spoilt _that_, and ask,
What the devil is wrong with Protestantism, that it has never an
ounce of tact? Or why, if it aims to be unworldly, must it always
overshoot its mark and be merely inhuman?"

Brother Warboise put nine-tenths of this discourse aside.

"You think it has spoilt the Master's dinner?" he asked anxiously,
with a glance towards the high table.

"Not a doubt of it," Brother Copas assured him. "Look at the old
boy, how nervously he's playing with his bread."

"I never meant, you know--"

"No, of course you didn't; and there's my second moral of the
Pelican. She digs a bill into her dearest, and then she's sorry.
At the best of her argument she's always owing her opponent
an apology for some offence against manners. She has no
_savoir-faire_." Here Brother Copas, relapsing, let the cloud of
speculation drift between him and Brother Warboise's remorse.
"_Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus_--I reverence the pluck
of a man who can cut himself loose from all that; for the worst loss
he has to face (if he only knew it) is the inevitable loss of
breeding. For the ordinary gentleman in this world there's either
C