as the rubbishy literature that people choke their minds with.
It doesn't make one so dull. Our wittiest men have often been lawyers.
Any orderly way of looking at things as cases and evidence seems to me
better than a perpetual wash of odds and ends bearing on nothing in
particular. And then, from a higher point of view, the foundations and
the growth of law make the most interesting aspects of philosophy and
history. Of course there will be a good deal that is troublesome,
drudging, perhaps exasperating. But the great prizes in life can't be
won easily--I see that."

"Well, my boy, the best augury of a man's success in his profession is
that he thinks it the finest in the world. But I fancy it so with most
work when a man goes into it with a will. Brewitt, the blacksmith, said
to me the other day that his 'prentice had no mind to his trade; 'and
yet, sir,' said Brewitt, 'what would a young fellow have if he doesn't
like the blacksmithing?"

The rector cherished a fatherly delight, which he allowed to escape him
only in moderation. Warham, who had gone to India, he had easily borne
parting with, but Rex was that romance of later life which a man
sometimes finds in a son whom he recognizes as superior to himself,
picturing a future eminence for him according to a variety of famous
examples. It was only to his wife that he said with decision: "Rex will
be a distinguished man, Nancy, I am sure of it--as sure as Paley's
father was about his son."

"Was Paley an old bachelor?" said Mrs. Gascoigne.

"That is hardly to the point, my dear," said the rector, who did not
remember that irrelevant detail. And Mrs. Gascoigne felt that she had
spoken rather weakly.

This quiet trotting of time at the rectory was shared by the group who
had exchanged the faded dignity of Offendene for the low white house
not a mile off, well enclosed with evergreens, and known to the
villagers, as "Jodson's." Mrs. Davilow's delicate face showed only a
slight deepening of its mild melancholy, her hair only a few more
silver lines, in consequence of the last year's trials; the four girls
had bloomed out a little from being less in the shade; and the good
Jocosa preserved her serviceable neutrality toward the pleasures and
glories of the world as things made for those who were not "in a
situation."

The low narrow drawing-room, enlarged by two quaint projecting windows,
with lattices wide open on a July afternoon to the scent of monthly
roses,