It was the day of farewell to the surroundings of the last three years. Julian was to ride into town that afternoon.
He went to lunch with Dick Hunter, the weather-beaten one, and talked to him as he imagined he wanted to be talked to. He had always liked his host's Bohemian ways very well, he was only impatient of his preoccupation with native postulants. There was his usual fly-swarm of them, that day as other days, about his threshold, and lunch was late, as usual. At last they began. Julian had the first two courses to himself for the most part, while his host was busy once again outside. Then came a third course. 'I had this for you,' said the host rather pathetically, as he settled down to his bread and cheese. 'It seemed the right thing for the farewell banquet of a Mission. It's the food of the country.'
Sure enough under the cover was a platter of brown millet with a savory side dish of beans for relish. Julian flushed up. 'No thanks, I've never tried millet pap yet, and I don't mean to,' he said.
His host smiled, 'As you will,' said he. 'You won't mind my having some, will you?' He helped himself sparingly, then he called the Mashona boy to take the dishes away. Julian the callous felt a shade remorseful.
'Here, let me try what it's like,' he said. His host took a piece of the millet-food on a fork, and dipped it in the side dish. He gave the result to Julian on a plate. 'For old sake's sake,' he murmured. Julian nibbled away rather delicately. 'It's not so awful,' he said.
He was riding into Rosebery that afternoon when the incident recurred to him.
He had a great grip of his subjects whatever they were so long as they were payable propositions, to use his own phrase.
The textual study of the Bible had been accounted such a proposition until recently. Bible-words they were now that buzzed in his ears.
'He it is to whom I shall give the sop when I have dipped it. And when He had dipped the sop. . .'
The sop, the dipping, yes, he remembered now. He had read the words in Church two or three evenings ago.