The community elected the present Prior almost in spite of themselves. He was so obviously intended to be a Superior. He had been consistently superior in every branch of knowledge that he took up, and so, despite his youth, Father Prior was elected. He had his own ideas about the spirit of the Order. He began by eliminating artificial altar flowers and tinsel-robed images, and made a clean sweep of the soiled paper lilies that adorned each shrine. So many things had to be replaced.
Old Brother Giles wept openly over the new crib, introduced on Father Prior's first Christmas in command. The figures were white, and had no eyes: the pupils were merely carved, not coloured. The Holy Child was represented as a sleeping infant wrapped in swaddling bands, and there was no ox and no ass — simply the three figures in a plain white-walled setting. No tinselled cherubs, no Chinese lanterns. People who really know about those things congratulated the Prior on his crib.
