Here Brother Copas laid down his rod on the grassy bank and felt for his snuff-box. As he helped himself to a pinch he slyly regarded the faces of his companions; and his own, contracting its muscles to take the dose, seemed to twist itself in a sardonic smile.
"Unlike Colt," he explained, "I read history sometimes, and observe its omens. You say that our clergy are active just now in building and restoring churches. Has it occurred to you that they were never so phenomenally active in building and rebuilding as on the very eve of the Reformation crash? Ask and inquire, my friend, what proportion of our English churches are Perpendicular; get from any handbook the date of that style of architecture; and apply the omen if you will."
"That sounds reassuring," said Brother Warboise. "And so you really think we Protestants are going to win?"
"God forbid! What I say is, that the High Anglicans will probably lose."
"One never knows when you are joking or when serious." Brother Warboise, leaning on his staff, pondered Brother Copas's face. It was a fine face; it even resembled the conventional portrait of Dante, but—I am asking the reader to tax his imagination—with humorous wrinkles set about the eyes, their high austerity clean taken away and replaced by a look of very mundane shrewdness, and lastly a grosser chin and mouth with a touch of the laughing faun in their folds and corners. "You are concealing your real reasons," said Brother Warboise.
"That," answered Brother Copas, "has been defined for the true function of speech.… But I am quite serious this time, and I ask you again to let Brother Bonaday off and take me on. You will find it worth while."
Brother Warboise could not see for the life of him why, at a time when it behoved all defenders of the reformed religion to stand shoulder to shoulder, Brother Bonaday should want to be let off.
"No?" said Brother Copas, picking up his rod again. "Well, those are my terms… and, excuse me, but was not that a fish over yonder? They are beginning to rise.…"
Brother Warboise muttered that he would think it over, and resumed his walk.
"He'll agree, safe enough. And now, no more talking!"