"
"He consecrated too much wine one Easter Sunday where he was taking
a _locum tenens_--and afterwards, when he had to drink it--it went
to his head."
She told it so seriously that Janet was driven to choke the rush of
laughter rising within her.
"Why did he have to drink it?" she asked.
"They have to. Consecrated wine mustn't be kept."
"But why not? Does it go bad?"
"Janet! No--but, don't you see?--they do keep it in the Roman
Catholic Church--on the altar--that's why the little red lamp is
always burning in front. That's why the people bow when they first
come into the church. And don't you see they're afraid in the Anglican
Church, that if the Bread and Wine were kept, people might venerate
it as the real Presence, which of course it isn't."
"Isn't it?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I couldn't tell you."
"Then he had to drink it all himself?"
"Yes."
"Why didn't he get somebody to help him?"
"He did try. He asked the warden--but the warden was a total
abstainer."
Janet looked sternly out of the window.
"Then he asked a man he saw outside the church--but he was apparently
an atheist. At any rate, he didn't believe in that.
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