ll from Father's manner that something had happened, he seemed
so unusually agitated, so perplexed, and sometimes so absent-minded
that he forgot all that was going on around him. Something was wrong,
argued Gwen, and as she did not like to question Father himself, she
plucked up her courage and asked Beatrice.

"Well, I suppose there's no reason why you shouldn't know, so long as
you don't chatter about it," said the latter. "I think you can be
trusted to keep a secret?"

"If it's Dad's secret," returned Gwen.

"Well, the fact is, Dad's had a living offered to him. You needn't
jump and clap your hands, for it's nothing at all out of the
way--indeed he hardly knows whether to accept it or not. It's a good
deal better from a money point of view than this curacy, but there are
objections."

"Where is it?"

"That's one of the chief objections. It's in a very poor part of a
crowded manufacturing town, a place black with huge chimneys that send
out clouds of smoke, where there's hardly a blade of grass, and the
very trees are all blighted with the chemicals in the air. Father
knows the place well; he was curate there for a short time just after
his ordination. He called it Sodom-and-Gomorrah-mixed then, and it's
probably worse instead of improved, for they've built more chemical
works, he hears."

"Oh!" said Gwen, her enthusiasm very much damped. "But he's surely not
going to accept it?"

"I don't know. There are many things to be considered. We're a big
family, and the boys have got to be educated somehow. I don't know how
it's to be done here."

"There's the Stedburgh Grammar School."

"Yes, but how are we to manage the fees? Winnie can't go and teach
there to equalize their school bills! If we went to Rawtenbeck, they
could all three be sent to King Edward's College. It's certainly an
inducement."

"And we should have to leave the Parsonage, and the garden, and
everything at Skelwick!"

"Yes; that's the terrible part. Father's simply torn in two. He's done
so much for Skelwick. Think what it was when he came! And now there's
the Mission Room at Basingwold, and the Lads' Club, and the Library,
and the Men's Class, and the Temperance Union, and all the Guilds.
Perhaps, if he went, another curate might come who took no interest in
them, and they would all go to pieces."

"Dad would be fearfully missed if he went."

"Yes; but there's another side even to that. He's only curate here,
and if Mr. Sutton were t