Ancren_, brother, means 'anchoresses,' recluses, women separated, and living apart from the world pretty much as by rights we men should be living in St.Hospital; and _riwle_ is 'rule,' or an instruction of daily conduct.

It is a sound old book, written in the thirteenth century by a certain good Bishop Poore (excellent name!) for a household of such good women at Tarrent, on the River Stour; and it contains a peck of counsel which might be preached not only upon the scandal-mongering women who are the curse of this place--yes, and applied; for it recommends here and there, a whipping as salutary--but even, _mutatis mutandis_, upon us Brethren--" "We've had one sermon, to-day," growled Brother Warboise.
"I am correcting it.

This book tells of the Pelican that she is a peevish bird and so hasty of temper that, when her young ones molest her, she kills them with her beak; and soon after, being sorry, she moans, smites her own breast with the same murderous beak, and so draws blood, with which (says the Bishop) 'she then quickeneth her slain birds.' But I, being no believer in miracles, think he is right as to the repentance but errs about the bringing back to life.
In this world, Brother, that doesn't happen; and we poor angry devils are left wishing that it could." Brother Warboise, playing with knife and fork, looked up sharply from under fierce eyebrows.
"The moral ?" pursued Brother Copas.

"There are two at least: the first, that here we are, two jolly Protestants, who might be as comfortable as rats in a cheese--you conscious of a duty performed, and I filled with admiration of your pluck--and lo! when old Biscoe annoys us by an act of petty spite, we turn, not on him, but on one another.

You, already more angry with yourself than with Biscoe, suddenly take offence with me because I didn't join you in standing between a good man and his dinner; while I, with a spoilt meal of my own for a grievance, choose to feel an irrational concern for the Master's, turn round on my comrade who has spoilt _that_, and ask, What the devil is wrong with Protestantism, that it has never an ounce of tact?
Or why, if it aims to be unworldly, must it always overshoot its mark and be merely inhuman ?" Brother Warboise put nine-tenths of this discourse aside.
"You think it has spoilt the Master's dinner ?" he asked anxiously, with a glance towards the high table.
"Not a doubt of it," Brother Copas assured him.