ight watch a game
of skill, enjoying the intellectual form of it, and counting the good
points, but by the end he was not a little carried away. The peroration
was undoubtedly very moving, very intimate, very modern, and Langham up
to a certain point was extremely susceptible to oratory, as he was to
music and acting. The critical judgment, however, at the root of him
kept coolly repeating as he stood watching the people defile out of the
church,--'This sort of thing will go down, will make a mark: Elsmere is
at the beginning of a career!'

In the afternoon Robert, who was feeling deeply guilty towards his wife,
in that he had been forced to leave so much of the entertainment of
Langham to her, asked his old friend to come for him to the school at
four o'clock and take him for a walk between two engagements. Langham
was punctual, and Robert carried him off first to see the Sunday
cricket, which was in full swing. During the past year the young Rector
had been developing a number of outdoor capacities which were probably
always dormant in his Elsmere blood, the blood of generations of country
gentlemen, but which had never had full opportunity before. He talked of
fishing as Kingsley might have talked of it, and, indeed, with constant
quotations from Kingsley; and his cricket, which had been good enough
at Oxford to get him into his College eleven, had stood him in specially
good stead with the Murewell villagers. That his play was not elegant
they were not likely to find out; his bowling they set small store
by; but his batting was of a fine, slashing, superior sort which soon
carried the Murewell Club to a much higher position among the clubs of
the neighborhood than it had ever yet aspired to occupy.

The Rector had no time to play on Sundays, however, and, after they
had hung about the green a little while, he took his friend over to the
Workmen's Institute, which stood at the edge of it. He explained
that the Institute had been the last achievement of the agent before
Henslowe, a man who had done his duty to the estate according to his
lights, and to whom it was owing that those parts of it, at any rate,
which were most in the public eye, were still in fair condition.

The Institute was now in bad repair and too small for the place. 'But
catch that man doing anything for us!' exclaimed Robert hotly. 'He will
hardly mend the roof now, merely, I believe, to spite me. But come and
see my new Naturalists' Club.'

An