nd there was a note of
mundane cheerfulness in the voice which did not quite correspond with
the sacerdotal elegance of this young man. Then he added quickly, as if
to save himself from asking the reason of this very unexpected visit--

"But you have never been here before; this is the first time you have
seen our college. And seeing it as it now is, you would not believe all
the delightful detail that a ray of sunlight awakens in that hideous
brown monotony, soaked with rain and bedimmed with mist."

"Yes, I can quite understand that the college is not looking its best on
a day like this. We have had very wet weather lately."

"No doubt, and I am afraid these late rains have interfered with the
harvest. The accounts from the North are very alarming, but in Sussex, I
suppose, everything was over at least two months ago. Still even there
the farmers have been losing money for some time back. I have had to
make some very heavy reductions. Pearson declared he could not possibly
continue at the present rent with corn as low as eight pounds a load.
This is very serious, but it is very difficult to arrive at the truth. I
want to talk to you; but we shall have plenty of time presently; you'll
stay and dine? And I'll show you over the college: you have never been
here before, and now I come to reckon it up, I find I have not seen you
for nearly five years."

"It must be very nearly that; I missed you the last time you were at
Thornby Place, and that was three years ago."

"Three years! It sounds very shocking, doesn't it? to have a beautiful
place in Sussex and not to live there: to prefer an ugly red-brick
college--Birmingham Tudor; my mother invented the expression. When she
is in a passion she hits on the very happiest concurrence of words; and
I must say she is right,--the architecture here is appallingly ugly;
and I don't think anything could be done to improve it, do you?"

"I can't say that I can suggest anything for the moment, but I thought
it was for the sake of the architecture, which I frankly confess I don't
in the least admire, that you lived here."

"You thought it was for the sake of the architecture...."

"Then why do you not come home and spend Christmas with your mother!"

"Christmas! Well, I suppose I ought to. But it will be hard to bear with
the plain Protestantism, the smug materialism of Sussex at such a
season; and when one thinks what the day is commemorative of--"

"You surely do not mean th