The reason he hated the curate was partly because he always wore black knickerbockers, and partly because he was such chums with the MacTavish boys.

How any self-respecting individual could put up with such savages as Jock and Sandy was a problem that Austin was wholly unable to solve, until it was suggested to him by somebody that the real attraction was neither Jock nor Sandy, but one of their screaming sisters--a Florrie, or a Lottie, or an Aggie--it really did not matter which, since they were all alike.

When this once dawned upon him, Austin despised the knickerbockered curate more than ever.
On the present occasion, however, the MacTavishes were happily not there; the only other guest (for of course the curate didn't count) being a friend of the curate's, who had come to spend a few days with him in the country.

The friend was a harsh-featured, swarthy young man, belonging to what may be called the muscular variety of high Ritualism; much given to a sort of aggressive slang--he had been known to refer to the bishop of his diocese as "the sporting old jester that bosses our show"-- and representing militant sacerdotalism in its most blusterous and rampant form.

He was also in the habit of informing people that he was "nuts" on the Athanasian Creed, and expressing the somewhat arbitrary opinion that if the Rev.John Wesley had had his deserts he would have been exhibited in a pillory and used as a target for stale eggs.