“Good heavens, Michael, what Piccadilly breezes are you wafting into my respectable and sacerdotal apartment?” “I rather like scent,” explained Michael lamely. “Well, I don’t, so, for goodness’ sake don’t bring any more of it in here. Pah! Phew! It’s worse than a Lenten address at a fashionable church. Really, you know, these people you’re in with now are not at all good for you, Michael.” “They’re more interesting than any of the chaps at school.” “Are they? There used to be a saying in my undergraduate days, ‘Distrust a freshman that’s always seen with third-year men.’ No doubt the inference is often unjust, but still the proverb remains.” “Ah, but these people aren’t at school with me,” Michael observed. “No, I wish they were. They might be licked into better shape, if they were,” retorted the priest. “I think you’re awfully down on Wilmot just because I didn’t meet him in some churchy set. If it comes to that, I met some much bigger rotters than him at Clere.” “My dear Michael,” argued Father Viner, “the last place I should have been surprized to see Master Wilmot would be in a churchy set. Don’t forget that if religion is a saving grace, religiosity is a constitutional weakness. Can’t you understand that a priest like myself who has taken the average course, public-school, ‘varsity, and theological college, meets a thundering lot of Wilmots by the way? My dear fellow, many of my best friends, many of the priests you’ve met in my rooms, were once upon a time every bit as decadent as the lilified Wilmot. They took it like scarlet fever or chicken-pox, and feel all the more secure now for having had it. Decadence, as our friend knows it, is only a new-fangled name for green-sickness. It’s a healthy enough mental condition for the young, but it’s confoundedly dangerous for the grown-up. The first pretty girl that looks his way cures it in a boy, if he’s a normal decent boy. I shouldn’t offer any objection to your behaviour, if you were being decadent with Mark Chator or Martindale or Rigg. Good heavens, the senior curate at the best East-end Mission, when he was at Oxford, used to walk down the High leading a lobster on a silver chain, and even that wasn’t original, for he stole the poor little fantastic idea from some precious French poet. But that senior curate is a very fine fellow to-day. No, no, this fellow Wilmot and all his set are very bad company for you, and I do not like your being decadent with these half-baked fancy-cakes.”