I feel it, though they are so kind to me. I have been
brought up to think in such a different way; and if I feel it, who am
fond of them, think how that young minister must feel it, who was
brought up in a totally different class?"

"What kind of class was this one brought up in?" said Mr. May, with a
laugh. "He need not have assaulted Reginald, if he had been born a
prince. We had done him no harm."

"That is making it entirely a private question," said Phoebe, suavely,
"which I did not mean to do. When such a man finds out abuses--what he
takes to be abuses--in the Church, which treats him like a roadside
ranter, may not he feel a right to be indignant? Oh, I am not so. I
think such an office as that chaplaincy is very good, one here and there
for the reward of merit; and I think he was very right to take it; but
still it would not do, would it, to have many of them? It would not
answer any good purpose," she said, administering a little sting
scientifically, "if all clergymen held sinecures."

These words were overheard by Reginald, who just then came in, and to
whom it was startling to find Phoebe serenely seated at tea with his
family. The hated word sinecure did not seem to affect him from her lips
as it would have done from any one else's. He came in quite
good-humouredly, and said with a smile--

"You are discussing me. What about me? Miss Beecham, I hope you take my
side."

"I take everybody's side," said Phoebe; "for I try to trace people's
motives. I can sympathise both with you and those who assailed you."

"Oh, that Dissenting fellow. I beg your pardon, Miss Beecham, if you are
a Dissenter; but I cannot help it. We never go out of our way to attack
them and their chapels and coteries, and why should they spring at our
throats on every occasion? I think it is hard, and I can't say I have
any charity to spare for this individual. What had we done to him?
Ursula, give me some tea."

"Miss Beecham, I leave the cause of the Church in younger and, I hope,
abler hands," said Mr. May, getting up.

Partly it was that Reginald's onslaught made him see for the first time
certain weak points in the situation; partly it was that his private
care became too clamorous, and he could not keep on further. He went
away quite abruptly, and went downstairs to his study, and shut himself
in there; and the moment he had closed the door, all this amusement
floated away, and the vulture gripped at him, beak and talons digg