"I have lately been engaged, Miss Warrender, in a very serious mental struggle. I am afraid I have been arrogant. I am afraid that I have boasted and bragged to my friends and to my parishioners that I was not as other men are, that my whole soul was given up to duty, that I was a Celibate, not merely from vocation but from inclination. But my feelings have undergone a change. At first, dear Miss Warrender, I was overpowered by a sense of what I considered my own degradation, but that feeling has entirely passed away. I confess to you that when I first came here I considered myself on a higher platform to that of most men, and I supposed that in obstinately refraining from the ordinary lot of clergymen, I mean marriage, that I was exercising a considerable degree of self-abnegation, in fact that I was leading a higher life. I now see that all this was a wicked error. The Church enjoins penance, and I have come to the conclusion from my intimate acquaintance with the sufferings of my unfortunate vicar, that instead of making a sacrifice in abstaining from matrimony I was actually guilty of profound and calculating selfishness. I see, too, that a married clergyman in giving up the idea of celibacy secures at least one efficient coadjutor in his parish work. As you know, Miss Warrender, I am in the habit of acting upon my convictions." "Then of course, Mr. Puffin, you will at once seek to secure the hand of some particularly objectionable person, in order to render the touching martyrdom you speak of the more meritorious?" "No, Miss Warrender, I shall not look upon that as a bounden duty. My position as a Celibate has many advantages from a professional point of view, for the female portion of my parishioners are enabled to look upon me as one of themselves." "Oh, I don't quite think that, Mr. Puffin; of course there is something--well, epicene about your dress, but then to some minds, you know, the clerical dress has a great attractiveness. Why the Louis Quatorze abbés, that we see so much of in comic opera, were terribly wicked people, you know, Mr. Puffin, and _they_ clung very tightly to the clerical dress, and so did Tartuffe for the matter of that." "Dear Miss Warrender, the cleric garb is but a delightful reminiscence of a past time; there is nothing ridiculous in it. You have the same thing in the Blue Coat boy, and there is assuredly nothing ridiculous in a Blue Coat boy." "Quite the contrary, Mr. Puffin; it is rather romantic than otherwise, but I can't fancy a full-grown man in yellow stockings, and a--hem--undivided skirt. By the way, Mr. Puffin, I can give you a suggestion: if you did really carry out your ideas and marry after all, you might adopt the Blue Coat costume as a sort of sign of your apostacy, a kind of _san benito_; you would still be retaining the mediæval idea, you see, and be thoroughly distinguishable from Tartuffe and the wicked abbés we were talking about."