Towards the several members of the Y. M. C. A. who shared the dormitory, the Three Ps always maintained a sarcastic and defiant attitude.
“We got a perfect right to do what we like in our corner,” Platt maintained. “You do what you like in yours.”
“But the language!” objected Morrison, the white-faced, earnest-eyed improver, who was leading a profoundly religious life under great difficulties.
“Language, man!” roared Parsons, “why, it’s Literature!”
“Sunday isn’t the time for Literature.”
“It’s the only time we’ve got. And besides—”
The horrors of religious controversy would begin....
Mr. Polly stuck loyally to the Three Ps, but in the secret places of his heart he was torn. A fire of conviction burnt in Morrison’s eyes and spoke in his urgent persuasive voice; he lived the better life manifestly, chaste in word and deed, industrious, studiously kindly. When the junior apprentice had sore feet and homesickness Morrison washed the feet and comforted the heart, and he helped other men to get through with their work when he might have gone early, a superhuman thing to do. Polly was secretly a little afraid to be left alone with this man and the power of the spirit that was in him. He felt watched.
Platt, also struggling with things his mind could not contrive to reconcile, said “that confounded hypocrite.”
“He’s no hypocrite,” said Parsons, “he’s no hypocrite, O’ Man. But he’s got no blessed Joy de Vive; that’s what’s wrong with him. Let’s go down to the Harbour Arms and see some of those blessed old captains getting drunk.”