n
one or two critical occasions before had disarmed the impetuous Elsmere.

'No use to discuss it further. You have a strong case, of course, and
you have put it well. Only, when you are pegging away at reforming and
enlightening the world, don't trample too much on the people who have
more than enough to do to enlighten themselves.'

As to Mrs. Elsmere, in this new turn of her son's fortunes, she realised
with humorous distinctness that for some years past Robert had been
educating her as well as himself. Her old rebellious sense of something
inherently absurd in the clerical status had been gradually slain in her
by her long contact through him with the finer and more imposing aspects
of church life. She was still on light skirmishing terms with the Harden
curates, and at times she would flame out into the wildest, wittiest
threats and gibes, for the momentary satisfaction of her own essentially
lay instincts; but at bottom she knew perfectly well that, when the
moment came, no mother could be more loyal, more easily imposed upon,
than she would be.

'I suppose, then, Robert, we shall be back at Murewell before very
long,' she said to him one morning abruptly, studying him the while out
of her small twinkling eyes. What dignity there was already in the young
lightly-built frame! what frankness and character in the irregular,
attractive face!

'Mother,' cried Elsmere indignantly, 'what do you take me for? Do you
imagine I am going to bury myself in the country at five or
six-and-twenty, take six hundred a year, and nothing to do for it? That
would be a deserter's act indeed.'

Mrs. Elsmere shrugged her shoulders. 'Oh, I supposed you would insist on
killing yourself, to begin with. To most people nowadays that seems to
be the necessary preliminary of a useful career.'

Robert laughed and kissed her, but her question had stirred him so much
that he sat down that very evening to write to his cousin Mowbray
Elsmere. He announced to him that he was about to read for orders, and
that at the same time he relinquished all claim on the living of
Murewell. 'Do what you like with it when it falls vacant,' he wrote,
'without reference to me. My views are strong that before a clergyman in
health and strength, and in no immediate want of money, allows himself
the luxury of a country parish, he is bound, for some years at any rate,
to meet the challenge of evil and poverty where the fight is
hardest--among our English town pop