CHAPTER TWENTY
The new curate, meanwhile, was having, in vulgar parlance, the time of his whole life. He was young, ritualistic, and he had a tendency towards being lungish. Therefore his devoutness was excessive. His rector, moreover, had a trick of preaching upon the practical issues of the day, while he left to his assistant the driving home the points of doctrine. And the assistant did drive them home most lustily and with resounding whacks, until the sedate walls of old Saint Peter's echoed with the blows, and the congregations gathered in old Saint Peter's danced with the pain of the prickings. The mere presence of a pin is not sufficient to produce any callousness of mind or body. Saint Peter's had never doubted the force or the efficiency of its doctrines; but it was at least a generation since it had been so rowelled with their points.
One such rowelling had just been taking place when, on the Sunday morning following the Easter holidays, Dolph Dennison dropped in to see Reed Opdyke. As he more than half expected, he found Olive Keltridge there ahead of him, and it was upon Olive Keltridge that, after a most unceremonious greeting to his host, Dolph turned the fire of his interrogation.
"Who is the expensive-looking gentleman in the bunny hood, Olive, the one that sat back in the corner and kept tabs on Brenton's reading of the lessons?"
Olive laughed at the undeniable accuracy of the description.
"That's the new curate, Dolph. You must have seen him before."
"Not," Dolph responded briefly. "It wouldn't be possible to forget him. What's he for? Ornament? I must say, Saint Peter's is getting frilly in its hoary age, and frills like that come dear."
"Not so dear as he looks," Olive reassured him. "In reality, he comes cheap. He is just up from nervous prostration and ordered to a more relaxing climate, so we got him at a bargain."
"Damaged goods. I see. Seen him, Opdyke? Hood and all—it's of white bunny—he looks like the tag-end of an importer's mark-down sale, and his idioms match the rest of him. Where'd they get him, Olive? Not your father?"
"My father didn't get him, if that is what you mean, Dolph. Mr. Prather, I believe it was, who recommended him."