“Oh, yes I will, and to prove it,” said Mr. Viner, “I’m going to make a suggestion of unparagoned earnestness.”
“What?”
“Now just let me diagnose your mental condition. You are sick of everything—Thucydides, cabbage, cricket, school, schoolfellows, certificates and life.”
“Well, you needn’t rag me about it,” Michael interrupted.
“In the Middle Ages gentlemen in your psychical perplexity betook themselves either to the Crusades or entered a monastery. Now, why shouldn’t you for these summer holidays betake yourself to a monastery? I will write to the Lord Abbot, to your lady mother, and if you consent, to the voluble Chator’s lady mother, humbly pointing out and ever praying, etc., etc.”
“You’re not ragging?” asked Michael suspiciously. “Besides, what sort of a monastery?”
“Oh, an Anglican monastery; but at the same time Benedictines of the most unimpeachable severity. In short, why shouldn’t you and Mark Chator go to Clere Abbas on the Berkshire Downs?”
“Are they strict?” enquired Michael. “You know, saying the proper offices and all that, not the Day Hours of the English Church—that rotten Anglican thing.”
“Strict!” cried Mr. Viner. “Why, they’re so strict that St. Benedict himself, were he to abide again on earth, would seriously consider a revision of his rules as interpreted by Dom Cuthbert Manners, O.S.B., the Lord Abbot of Clere.”
“It would be awfully ripping to go there,” said Michael enthusiastically.