and the light-green leaves were beginning
to uncrumple on the wind-wilted elders, when John-James appeared on a
mission of his own at the Vicarage. There was a good deal of coming and
going between the Manor and the Vicarage, for the Parson laid himself
open to no charge of alienating affections, but this visit was quick
with a portentousness beyond the normal. To begin with, John-James asked
for Mr. Boase instead of for Ishmael, and when he was shown into the
study he stood revolving his cap in his hands and some weighty thought
in his brain till the Parson bade him sit down and say what it was had
brought him. But John-James still stood and, his eyes fixed anxiously on
the Parson, at last blurted out:

"Mr. Boase, you'm tachen Ishmael things like gentry do belong to knaw,
aren't 'ee?"

"Why, yes," said Boase.

"I want to knaw if 'ee'll tache our Vassie too. Archelaus, he'em too
old, and thinks on naught but gwain with females, and Tom's doen fine
with Mr. Tonkin, and for me--I'm not that class. Farmen's my traade. But
the maid, she'm so quick and clever, 'tes only fitty she should have her
chance same as the lil'un. She's gwain to be 'ansome, white as a lily
she is, and it'll be better for she if she do have things to think of
like the gentry. For if Ishmael's gentry, there's no rason Vassie
shoulden be. They'm the same blood after all. An' it's dangerous blood,
Mr. Boase."

The Parson sat for a moment in silence while John-James shifted his feet
anxiously. Mingled with the swift appreciation of the humour of himself
as tutor to the arrogant Vassie was a pang of reproachful conscience.

"What does your mother say?" he temporised; "and Vassie?"

"Mother's willen, only she did say you was so took up with the lil'un
you wouldn't take no account of Vassie, seeing she'm only a bastard like
the rest of us. But Vassie said if you thought it was the right thing to
do by her you'd do it."

Boase had as little vanity as any man, but it was pleasurably pricked by
this. Also he still reproached himself.

"John-James," he began almost diffidently, "you mustn't talk like that
about bastards--as though it made any difference to me. You know it
isn't because of that I look after Ishmael and treat him differently;
it's because he was left to me as a charge. I want to make a fine thing
of him and for him to make a fine thing of Cloom.... But that includes
his overcoming this barrier between him and his family; it won't be
com