 himself) that caused any unpleasantness between
them, and no doubt Pryer was right, and he, Ernest, much too nervous. However,
that might stand over for the present.
    In like manner, though he had received a shock by reason of his conversation
with Mr. Shaw, and by looking at the Vestiges, he was as yet too much stunned to
realise the change which was coming over him. In each case the momentum of old
habits carried him forward in the old direction. He therefore called on Pryer
and spent an hour and more with him.
    He did not say that he had been visiting among his neighbours; this to Pryer
would have been like a red rag to a bull. He only talked in much his usual vein
about the proposed college, the lamentable want of interest in spiritual things
which was characteristic of modern society, and other kindred matters; he
concluded by saying that for the present he feared Pryer was indeed right and
that nothing could be done.
    »As regards the laity,« said Pryer, »nothing; not until we have a discipline
which we can enforce with pains and penalties. How can a sheep dog work a flock
of sheep unless he can bite occasionally as well as bark? But as regards
ourselves we can do much.«
    Pryer's manner was strange throughout the conversation as though he were
thinking all the time of something else. His eyes wandered curiously over
Ernest, as Ernest had often noticed them wander before; the words were about
church discipline, but somehow or other the discipline part of the story had a
knack of dropping out after having been again and again emphatically declared to
apply to the laity and not to the clergy; once indeed Pryer had pettishly
exclaimed, »Oh bother the college of Spiritual Pathology.« As regards the
clergy, glimpses of a pretty large cloven hoof kept peeping out from under the
saintly robe of Pryer's conversation, to the effect that so long as they were
theoretically perfect, practical peccadilloes - or even peccadaccios, if there
is such a word - were of less importance. He was restless as though wanting to
approach a subject which he did not quite venture to touch upon, and kept
harping (he did this about every third day) on the wretched lack of definition
concerning the limits of vice and virtue, and the way in which half the vices
wanted regulating rather than prohibiting. He dwelt also on the advantages of
complete unreserve, and hinted that there were mysteries into which Ernest had
not yet been initiated but which would enlighten him when he got to know them as
he would be
