ing at his sermon.

"We 're giving you a lot of trouble," said Shelton, "it's really very
good of you."

"Not at all," the parson answered; "I'm only grieved the house is empty."

It was a truly dismal contrast to the fatness of the land they had been
passing through, and the parson's voice issuing from bloodless lips,
although complacent, was pathetic. It was peculiar, that voice of his,
seeming to indicate an intimate acquaintanceship with what was fat and
fine, to convey contempt for the vulgar need of money, while all the time
his eyes--those watery, ascetic eyes--as plain as speech they said, "Oh,
to know what it must be like to have a pound or two to spare just once a
year, or so!"

Everything in the room had been bought for cheapness; no luxuries were
there, and necessaries not enough. It was bleak and bare; the ceiling
cracked, the wall-paper discoloured, and those books--prim, shining
books, fat-backed, with arms stamped on them--glared in the surrounding
barrenness.

"My predecessor," said the parson, "played rather havoc with the house.
The poor fellow had a dreadful struggle, I was told. You can,
unfortunately, expect nothing else these days, when livings have come
down so terribly in value! He was a married man--large family!"

Crocker, who had drunk his steaming lemonade, was smiling and already
nodding in his chair; with his black garment buttoned closely round his
throat, his long legs rolled up in a blanket, and stretched towards the
feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather patchy air.
Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of fatigue; the
strangeness of the place was stimulating his brain; he kept stealing
glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson, the furniture,
the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by seeing legs that have
outgrown their trousers. But there was something underlying that
leanness of the landscape, something superior and academic, which defied
all sympathy. It was pure nervousness which made him say:

"Ah! why do they have such families?"

A faint red mounted to the parson's cheeks; its appearance there was
startling, and Crocker chuckled, as a sleepy man will chuckle who feels
bound to show that he is not asleep.

"It's very unfortunate," murmured the parson, "certainly, in many cases."

Shelton would now have changed the subject, but at this moment the
unhappy Crocker snored. Being a man of action, he had gone to sleep.