no peace like the peace of those who have conquered all such
rebellious impulses, such self-justifying thoughts, who have given
themselves up lovingly to God to be chastened as much and as long as He
wills. There is no praise like the praise of a soul that can say with
holy Job, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him;" or with
Habakkuk, "Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit
be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields
shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and
there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I
will joy in the God of my salvation."'

'If I had sung in the choir to-day, it wouldn't have been real praise; I
shouldn't have thought of it or meant it,' Cecil owned to himself; and
it did not seem to him so hard as before that he had been excluded,
though he was far from entering fully into the spirit of submission
which Mr. Cunningham had set before his people as the thing to be longed
and striven for. Entering fully! Ah, with most of us it takes a lifetime
to do that; but none of us are too young to _begin_ to learn it.

Cecil went back to his old position by the churchyard palings after
service to wait for Mr. Yorke, but could not quite escape some greetings
from his village friends, who were 'glad to see him back, and hoped he
had his health.' He looked up anxiously when he saw his father and the
curate come forth from the vestry together; but they soon parted, and
Mr. Yorke came across the grass to him, saying, 'All right, Cecil; you
can come home with me.'

'Home' was some bachelor lodgings in a very rustic cottage with a porch
all overgrown with Tangier peas, and a queerly-shaped dining-room, the
ceiling of which was so low that Mr. Yorke's head seemed but a little
way off it as he walked about. On the other side of the passage was a
drawing-room, wonderfully smart and uncomfortable, with groups of wax
fruit under glass shades on rickety tables, crochet couvrettes over the
back of almost every chair as well as on the sofa, and a wonderful
festoon of green and yellow tissue paper round the glass above the
mantelpiece. Mr. Yorke took Cecil in there while the cloth was being
laid, but told him he never sat there, as there was not a single chair
which would bear his weight, nor a table which did not creak when it was
leant upon.

'I should turn all this trumpery out, and make Mrs. Keeling give me
something s