“I like the way you take yourself as a typical priest. Very few of them are like you.”
“Come, that’s rather a stupid remark, I think,” said Mr. Viner coldly.
“Is it? I’m sorry. It doesn’t seem to worry you very much that I’ve lost my faith,” Michael went on in an aggrieved voice.
“No, because I don’t think you have. I’ve got a high enough opinion of you to believe that if you really had lost your faith, you wouldn’t plunge comfortably down into one of my arm-chairs and give me the information in the same sort of tone you’d tell me you’d forgotten to bring back a book I’d lent you.”
“I know you always find it very difficult to take me seriously,” Michael grumbled. “I suppose that’s the right method with people like me.”
“I thought you’d come up to talk about the South African War. If I’d known the war was so near home, I shouldn’t have been so frivolous,” said the priest. His eyes were so merry in the leaping firelight that Michael was compelled against his will to smile.
“Of course, you make me laugh at the time and I forget how serious I meant to be when I arrived, and it’s not until I’m at home again that I realize I’m no nearer to what I wanted to say than when I came up,” protested Michael.
“I’m not the unsympathetic boor you’d make me out,” Mr. Viner said.
“Oh, I perfectly understand that all this heart-searching becomes a nuisance. But honestly, Mr. Viner, I think I’ve done nothing long enough.”
“Then you do want to enlist?” said the priest quickly.