again the sullen shabby rascal to
whom he had given shelter. It was Saturday night, and he had still his
sermon to prepare for the next day; but the young man was in a state
of disgust with all the circumstances of his lot, and could not make
up his mind to go in and address himself to his work as he ought to
have done. Such a sense of injustice and cruelty as possessed him was
not likely to promote composition, especially as the pulpit addresses
of the Curate of St Roque's were not of a declamatory kind. To think
that so many years' work could be neutralised in a day by a sudden
breath of scandal, made him not humble or patient, but fierce and
resentful. He had been in Wharfside that afternoon, and felt convinced
that even the dying woman at No. 10 Prickett's Lane had heard of Rosa
Elsworthy; and he saw, or imagined he saw, many a distrustful
inquiring glance thrown at him by people to whom he had been a kind
of secondary Providence. Naturally the mere thought of the failing
allegiance of the "district" went to Mr Wentworth's heart. When he
turned round suddenly from listening to a long account of one poor
family's distresses, and saw Tom Burrows, the gigantic bargeman, whose
six children the Curate had baptised in a lump, and whose baby had
been held at the font by Lucy Wodehouse herself, looking at him
wistfully with rude affection, and something that looked very much
like pity, it is impossible to describe the bitterness that welled up
in the mind of the Perpetual Curate. Instead of leaving Wharfside
comforted as he usually did, he came away wounded and angry, feeling
to its full extent the fickleness of popular sympathy. And when he
came into Grange Lane and saw the shutters closed, and Mr Wodehouse's
green door shut fast, as if never more to open, all sources of
consolation seemed to be shut against him. Even the habit he had of
going into Elsworthy's to get his newspaper, and to hear what talk
might be current in Carlingford, contributed to the sense of utter
discomfort and wretchedness which overwhelmed him. Men in other
positions have generally to consult the opinion of their equals only;
but all sorts of small people can plant thorns in the path of a priest
who has given himself with fervour to the duties of his office. True
enough, such clouds blow by, and sometimes leave behind a sky clearer
than before; but that result is doubtful, and Mr Wentworth was not of
the temper to comfort himself with philosophy. He