After that first morning he was indeed
ashamed to let her see the proportion between his pastoral visits
and his theological reading; but the newspapers (he had two or three
weekly ones) had a curious facility of expansion, and there was a
perilous sound in "I'll just see where the meet is,"--not that he
had the most distant idea of repairing thither; it was pure filial
interest in learning where his father and Edith would be.
Jenny could not tell whether her presence conduced to diligence or
to chatter, but he minded her more than any one else, and always
stuck close to her, insisting on her admiring all his proteges.
There was one with whom he was certainly doing a work, which, as
Julius truly said, no one more clerical could have done so well--
namely, the son of his landlady, a youth who held a small clerkship
in an office at Willansborough, and who had fallen this year under
the attraction of the Backsworth races, so as to get into serious
difficulties with his master, and narrowly escape dismissal for the
sake of his mother.
The exceeding good-nature and muscular Christian side of the
lodger's character was having a most happy effect on the lad.
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