of dark grey flannel, brown
brogue shoes and a soft collar with a black tie tied in a sailor's knot.
He disliked clerical dress and he rarely wore it. He was dark. His
good-looking face bore habitually a rather sulky expression as though he
were a little bored or dissatisfied. You would never have thought, to
look at him, that he was a clergyman, or, as he would have said, a
priest, and in not thinking that you would have paid him the compliment
that pleased him most. This was not because Mr. Boom Bagshaw lacked
earnestness in his calling, for he was enormously in earnest, but
because he disliked and despised the conventional habits and manners and
appearance of the clergy and, in any case, intensely disliked being one
of a class. For the same reasons he wore a monocle; not because the
vision of his right eye was defective but because no clergyman wears a
monocle. It is not done by the priesthood and that is why the Reverend
Cyril Boom Bagshaw did it.

He strolled negligently into the morning room, his hands in his trouser
pockets, the skirt of his jacket rumpled on his wrists. He gave the
impression of having been strolling about the house all day and of now
strolling in here for want of a better room to stroll into. He nodded
negligently to Sabre, "Hullo, Sabre." He smiled negligently at Mabel and
seated himself negligently on the edge of the table, still with his
hands in his pockets. He swung one leg negligently and negligently
remarked, "Good morning, Mrs. Sabre. Embroidery?"

Sabre had the immediate and convinced feeling that the negligent and
reverend gentleman was not in his house but that he was permitted to be
in the house of the negligent and reverend gentleman. And this was the
feeling that the negligent and reverend gentleman invariably gave to his
hosts, whoever they might be; likewise to his congregations. Indeed it
was said by a profane person (who fortunately does not enter this
history) that the Deity entered Mr. Boom Bagshaw's church on the same
terms, and accepted them.

As he sat negligently swinging his leg he frequently strained his chin
upwards and outwards, rather as if his collar were tight (but it was
neatly loose), or as if he were performing an exercise for stretching
the muscles of his neck. This was a habit of his.

VII

A silver entree dish was placed before Mabel, another before Sabre. Low
Jinks removed her mistress's cover and Mr. Boom Bagshaw pushed aside a
flower vase to obtai