clergy. Mumbo-jumbery was another of his favourite words. An atheist and an anti-clerical of the strict old school he was. Not that in any case, he gave himself much time to think about these things; he was too busy being an unsuccessful architect. As for Gumbril's mother her diligence had not been dogmatic. She had just been diligently good, that was all. Good; good? It was a word people only used nowadays with a kind of deprecating humourousness. Good. Beyond good and evil? We are all that nowadays. Or merely below them, like earwigs? I glory in the name of earwig, Gumbril made a mental gesture and inwardly declaimed. But good in any case, there was no getting out of that, good she had been. Not nice, not merely molto simpatica—how charmingly and effectively these foreign tags assist one in the great task of calling a spade by some other name!—but goods You felt the active radiance of her goodness when you were near her
. . . And that feeling, was that less real and valid than two plus two?
The Reverend Pelvey had nothing to reply. He was reading with a holy gusto of "houses full of all good things which thou fillest not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not."
She had been good and she had died when he was still a boy; died—but he hadn't been told that till much later—of creeping and devouring pain. Malignant disease—oh, caro nome!
"Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God," said Mr. Pelvey.
Even when the ulcers are benign; thou shalt fear. He had travelled up from school to see her, just
