"I suppose no one heard you leave the room," said Martin, but Lawrence never rose to jests about his bulk and gait.
"And there were all Brockley's gang," he went on, "sitting with all the light of grace in their eyes. And when the pock-marked chap got busy in the impressive line you could fairly hear them thinking, 'God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world.'"
"And a very good thought," said Rendell.
Lawrence would always rise to the religious bait.
"Just the kind of thought that you would expect from a well-fed Liberal poet."
Lawrence opened violently a bottle of Munich beer and drained the contents. Then he gave a vast sigh of relief, pulled out his pipe and stood expansively before the fire, exposing, unconsciously, a large gap of shirt between his waistcoat and the grey flannel trousers whose sole support lay in their tightness.
"It isn't God that matters," he declared. "It's the Godites. They're worse than ever."
"They've at least begun to move with the times."
"Exactly," said Martin, coming in as usual to assist Lawrence. "They swallow everything new and say they meant it all the time. I don't mind good old burn-the-devil bigots, but this up-to-date Interpreting and Restatement and Revaluation and Earnest Wash, it makes me sick. Why can't they give up their tribal deity and do something sensible?"
"You're so beastly crude," answered Rendell. "Oxford isn't exactly a brainless place, and it's full of religion."