s I understand is expected in
Prickett's Lane. If I come to any advancement," said the Curate of St
Roque's, "it must be in social estimation, and not in worldly wealth,
which is out of my way;" and he went down to Wharfside rather cheerfully
than otherwise, having begun to experience that pertinacity carries the
day, and that it might be possible to goad Lucy into the experiment of
how much her housekeeping talents were good for, and whether, with a
good wife, even a Perpetual Curate might be able to live without any
particular bother in respect to the grocer's bill. Mr Wentworth being at
present warmly engaged in this business of persuasion, and as intent as
ever on having his own way, was not much affected by the Carlingford
gossip. He went his way to Wharfside all the same, where the service was
conducted as of old, and where all the humble uncertain voices were
buoyed up and carried on by the steady pure volume of liquid sound which
issued from Lucy Wodehouse's lips into the utterance of such a
'Magnificat' as filled Mr Wentworth's mind with exultation. It was the
woman's part in the worship--independent, yet in a sweet subordination;
and the two had come back--though with the difference that their love
was now avowed and certain, and they were known to belong to each
other--to much the same state of feeling in which they were before the
Miss Wentworths came to Carlingford, or anything uncomfortable had
happened. They had learned various little lessons, to be sure, in the
interim, but experience had not done much more for them than it does for
ordinary human creatures, and the chances are that Mr Wentworth would
have conducted himself exactly in the same manner another time had he
been placed in similar circumstances; for the lessons of experience,
however valuable, are sometimes very slow of impressing themselves upon
a generous and hasty temperament, which has high ideas of honour and
consistency, and rather piques itself on a contempt for self-interest
and external advantages--which was the weakness of the Curate of St
Roque's. He returned to the "great work" in Wharfside with undiminished
belief in it, and a sense of being able to serve his God and his
fellow-creatures, which, though it may seem strange to some people, was
a wonderful compensation to him for the loss of Skelmersdale. "After
all, I doubt very much whether, under any circumstances, we could have
left such a work as is going on here," he said to Luc