ensible,' said Cecil, with a boy's rough-and-ready way of
disposing of difficulties.

'No, you wouldn't, if you saw what a delight she takes in it all, and
what a solace it is to her to come and dust and admire. Between the
dining-room and a little den I have up-stairs, I do very well. I only
hope you'll have as snug a little hole and as worthy a little landlady
when _you_ are a curate in lodgings.'

'I don't know whether I shall ever be a clergyman now,' said Cecil
gloomily.

Mr. Yorke, who was standing at the window looking out, while his guest
had ventured on one of the dangerous chairs, turned round in surprise.
'You don't mean to say you are giving up that? I thought you had wished
it ever since you were four years old.'

'So I have; and if I had stayed at Eastwood, I might some day have got
one of the Hulston scholarships, and that would have helped me at
college; but now there's no chance for me. I'm going to old Bardsley's
day school in Fairview, and there's nothing to be got _there_.'

'Still I wouldn't give up if I were you, my boy; I would keep the hope
before me. There's nothing like a high aim to help one through the
drudgery of school-work, and keep one out of stupid, little, mean
temptations.'

'I know, and it was for that I worked,' said Cecil, 'at least for that
chiefly; but it was all no use, and it doesn't seem worth while to try
any more.'

Mr. Yorke, who had supposed that Cecil _hadn't_ worked, did not quite
know what answer to make to this.

'I think it seems more worth while than ever,' he said after a minute.
'If one has lost ground, one must make it up again somehow. You know you
might be ordained even without going to Oxford, though I don't mean to
say that a college education is not a good thing, if one can have it.'

'Father went to Oxford, and so did you, didn't you?' said Cecil.

'Yes, there was no difficulty about that, as it happened; but my way was
not all smooth, any more than yours. I had not been meant for a
clergyman, and there were objections to be got over, and a good deal
that was discouraging; but it all came right at last.'

He broke off his sentence rather abruptly, but in his heart it was ended
thus: 'Thanks be to God for it.'

If Cecil had ever seen the luxurious home from which the curate came, or
had known what good worldly prospects he had given up to enter holy
orders, he would have made quite a hero of him in his own mind; but,
even as it was, he looked up