wish I did."
"But you are a fair mathematician?"
"It was my weakest point."
The clergyman's expression was more melancholy than ever. "It is a great pity – a very great pity, indeed," said he. "However, I see writing materials on the table, and shall be glad if you will write me down your full name, age, and address."
Harry sat down and wrote what was required of him in the pretty, rather scholarly hand which looked like and was the imitation of a prettier and more scholarly one. Then he unsuspectingly blotted the sheet and handed it to Mr. Walthew, who instantly began shaking his head in the most depressing fashion.
"It is as I feared," said he; "you do not even write a fair commercial hand. It is well enough at a distance," and he held the sheet at arm's length, "but it is not too easy to read, and I fear it would never do in an office. There are several City men among my parishioners; I had hoped to go to one or two of them with a different tale, but now I fear – I greatly fear. However, one can but try. You do not fancy any of the professions, I suppose? Not that you could afford one if you did."
"Are the fees so high?" asked poor Harry, in a broken-spirited voice.
"High enough to be prohibitive in your case, though it might not be so if you had saved your money," the clergyman took care to add. "Of which particular profession were you thinking?"
"We – we have been talking it all over, and we did speak of – the Law."
"Out of the question; it would cost hundreds, and you wouldn't make a penny for years."
"Then there is – schoolmastering."
"It leads to nothing; besides – excuse me, Henry – but do you think you are scholar enough yourself to – to presume to – teach others?"
Harry fetched a groan.
"I don't know. I managed well enough in Mozambique, but it was chiefly teaching English. I only know that I would work day and night to improve myself, if once I could get a chance."
"Well," said Uncle Spencer, "it is just possible that I may hear in my parish of some delicate or backward boy whom you would be competent to ground, and if so I shall recommend you as far as I conscientiously can. But I cannot say I am sanguine, Henry; it would be a different thing if you had worked harder at school and got into the Sixth Form. I suppose no other career has occurred to you as feasible? I confess I find the range sadly restricted by the rather discreditable limitations to which you own."
Another career had occurred to Harry, and it was the one to which he felt most drawn, but by inclination rather than by conscious aptitude, so that he would have said nothing about it had not Mrs. Ringrose joined them at this moment. Her brother greeted her with a tepid salute, then dryly indicated the drift of the conversation, enlarging upon the vista of hopeless disability which it had revealed in Henry, and concluding with a repetition of his last question.
"No," said Harry rather sullenly, "I can think of nothing else I'm fit for unless I sweep a crossing; and then you would say I hadn't money for the broom!"
"But, surely, my boy," cried his mother, "you have forgotten what you said to me last night?"
Harry frowned and glared, for it is one thing to breathe your ridiculous aspirations to the dearest of mothers in the dead of night, and quite another thing to confide them to a singularly unsympathetic uncle in broad daylight. But Mrs. Ringrose had turned to her brother, and she would go on: "There is one thing he tells me he would rather do than anything else in the world – and I am sure he could do it best."
"What is that?"
"Write!"
Harry groaned. Mr. Walthew raised his eyebrows. Mrs. Ringrose sat triumphant.
"Write what, my dear Mary?"
"Articles – poems – books."
A grim resignation was given to Harry, and he laughed aloud as the clergyman shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
"On his own showing," said Uncle Spencer, "I should doubt whether he has – er – the education – for that."
Mrs. Ringrose looked displeased, and even dangerous, for the moment; but she controlled her feelings on perceiving that the boy himself was now genuinely amused.
"You are quite mistaken," she contented herself with saying. "Have I never shown you the parody on Gray's Elegy he won a guinea for when he was fourteen? Then I will now."
And the fond lady was on her feet, only to find her boy with his back to the door, and laughter, shame and anger fighting for his face.
"You shall do no such thing, mother," Harry said firmly. "That miserable parody!"
"It was nothing of the kind. It began, 'The schoolbell tolls the knell – '"
"Hush, mother!"
"'Of parting play'" she added wilfully.
Mr. Walthew's eyebrows had reached their apogee.
"That is quite enough, Mary," said he. "I disapprove of parodies, root and branch; they are invariably vulgar; and when the poem parodied has a distinctly religious tendency, as in this case, they are also irreverent and profane. I am only glad to see that Henry is himself ashamed of his lucubration. If he should write aught of a religious character, and get it into print – a difficult matter, Henry, for one so indifferently equipped – my satisfaction will not be lessened by my surprise. Meanwhile let him return to those classics he should never have neglected, for by the dead languages only can we hope to obtain a mastery of our own; and I, for my part, will do my best in what, after all, I regard as a much less hopeless direction. Good-bye, Mary. I trust that I shall see you both on Sunday."
But Mrs. Ringrose would not let him go without another word for her boy's parody.
"When I read it to Mr. Lowndes," said she, to Harry's horror, "he said that he thought that a lad who could write so well at fourteen should have a future before him. So you see everybody is not of your opinion, Spencer; and Mr. Lowndes saw nothing vulgar."
"Do I understand you to refer," said Mr. Walthew, bristling, "to the person who has done me the honour of calling upon me in connection with your affairs?"
"He is the only Mr. Lowndes I know."
"Then let me tell you, Mary, that his is not a name to conjure with in my hearing. I should say, however, that he is the last person to be a competent judge of vulgarity or – or other matters."
"Then you dislike him too?" cried poor Mrs. Ringrose.
"Do you?" said Mr. Walthew, turning to Harry; and uncle and nephew regarded one another for the first time with mutually interested eyes.
"Not I," said Harry stoutly. "He has been my mother's best friend."
"I am sorry to hear it," the clergyman said; "what's more, I don't believe it."
"But he has been and he is," insisted the lady; "you little know what he has done for me."
"I wouldn't trust his motives," said her brother. "I am sorry to say it, Mary; he is very glib and plausible, I know; but – he doesn't strike me as an honest man!"
Mrs. Ringrose was troubled and
