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Oddsfish! by Robert Hugh Benson
page 54 of 587 (09%)
these good fathers; and it will bring trouble on them. They hold their
consults even in London, which I think over-rash; and no man knows what
passes at them. Now I myself--" and so his tongue wagged on, telling of
his own excellence and prudence, and even his own spirituality, while
his eyes watered with the ale that he drank, and his face grew ever more
red. And yet there was no true simplicity in the man; he had that kind
of cunning that is eked out with winks and becks and nods that all the
world could see. He talked of my Cousin Dorothy, too, and her virtues,
and what a great lady she would be some day when these virtues were
known; and he, declared that in spite of this he would never let her go
to Court; and then once more he went back again to his earlier talk of
the corruptions there, and of what my Lady this and Her Grace of that
had said and done and thought.

* * * * *

Mr. Fenwick's lodgings in Drury Lane were such as any man might have.
The Jesuit Fathers lived apart in London--Father Whitbread in the City,
Father Ireland in Russell Street, and Father Harcourt, who was called
the "Rector of London," I heard, in Duke Street, near the arch--lest too
much attention should be drawn to them if they were all together. They
were pleasant quiet men, and received me very kindly--for my cousin who
had forgot some matter he had to do before he went into the country, was
gone down into the City to see to it. Mr. Grove, whom I learned later to
be a lay brother of the Society, opened the door to me; and shewed me to
the room where they were all three together.

They were all three of them just such men as you might meet anywhere, in
coffee-houses or taverns, none of them under forty or over sixty years
old. Father Harcourt was seventy--but he was not there. They were in
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