It is three o'clock, Good Friday afternoon. Coaches and cars, cyclists and hikers, pour from the cities into the countryside; it is the first day of the holidays. Within the cities it is a nondescript sort of day; the shops, theatres, cinemas are closed, but (such at least are the mores of the British), there are crowds at the football grounds and the ‘dogs'.

There are unusually large crowds in the Catholic churches too. one wonders what has brought them. This is no day of ‘obligation’ ; absence from this service will bring no reproach and incur no guilt. Yet, besides the regular congregation, there are rows of unfamiliar faces; faces one seldom or never sees at Sunday Mass.