Mr. Galloway withdrew to his private room, and for a few minutes silence supervened—nothing was to be heard but the scratching of pens. But Roland Yorke, who had a great antipathy to steady work, and as great a love for his own tongue, soon began again.
“I say, Channing, what an awful blow the dropping of that expected money must be for you fellows! I’m blest if I didn’t dream of it last night! If it spoilt my rest, what must it have done by yours!”
“Why! how could you have heard of it last night?” exclaimed Arthur, in surprise. “I don’t think a soul came to our house to hear the news, except Mr. Yorke: and you were not likely to see him. He left late. It is in every one’s mouth this morning.”
“I had it from Hamish. He came to the party at the Knivetts’. Didn’t Hamish get taken in!” laughed Roland. “He understood it was quite a ladies’ affair, and loomed in, dressed up to the nines, and there he found only a bachelor gathering of Dick’s. Hamish was disappointed, I think; he fancied he was going to meet Ellen Huntley; and glum enough he looked—”
“He had only just heard of the loss,” interrupted Arthur. “Enough to make him look glum.”
“Rubbish! It wasn’t that. He announced at once that the money was gone for good and all, and laughed over it, and said there were worse disasters at sea. Knivett said he never saw a fellow carry ill news off with so high a hand. Had he been proclaiming the accession of a fortune, instead of the loss of one, he could not have been more carelessly cheerful. Channing, what on earth shall you do about your articles?”
A question that caused the greatest pain, especially when put by Roland Yorke; and Arthur’s sensitive face flushed.
“You’ll have to stop as a paid clerk for interminable years! Jenkins, you’ll have him for your bosom companion, if you look sharp and make friends,” cried Roland, laughing loudly.
“No, sir, I don’t think Mr. Arthur Channing is likely to become a paid clerk,” said Jenkins.
“Not likely to become a paid clerk! why, he is one. If he is not one, I’d like to know who is. Channing, you know you are nothing else.”
“I may be something else in time,” quietly replied Arthur, who knew how to control his rebellious spirit.
“I say, what a rum go it is about that surplice!” exclaimed Roland Yorke, dashing into another topic. “It’s not exactly the mischief itself that’s rum, but the master seem to be making so much stir and mystery over it! And then the hint at the seniors! They must mean Huntley.”
“I don’t know who they mean,” said Arthur, “but I am sure Huntley never did it. He is too open, too honourable—”
“And do you pretend to say that Tom Channing and my brother Ger are not honourable?” fiercely interrupted Roland Yorke.
“There you go, Yorke; jumping to conclusions! It is not to be credited that any one of the seniors did it: still less, if they had done it, that they would not acknowledge it. They are all boys of truth and honour, so far as I believe. Huntley, I am sure, is.”
“And of Tom, also, I conclude you feel sure?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And I am sure of Ger Yorke. So, if the master is directing his suspicion to the seniors, he’ll get floored. It’s odd what can have turned it upon them.”
“I don’t think the master suspects the seniors,” said Arthur. “He called them to his aid.”
“You heard what he just now said to Galloway. Jenkins, there is a knock at the door.”
Jenkins went to open it. He came back, and said Mr. Yorke was wanted.
Roland lazily proceeded to the outer passage, and, when he saw who was standing there, he put himself into a passion. “What do you mean by presuming to come to me here?” he haughtily asked.
“Well, sir, perhaps you’ll tell me where I am to come, so as to get to see you?” civilly replied the applicant, one who bore the appearance of a tradesman. “It seems it’s of no use going to your house; if I went ten times a day, I should get the same answer—that you are not at home.”
“Just take yourself off,” said Roland.
“Not till you pay me; or tell me for certain when you will pay me, and keep your promise. I want my money, sir, and I must have it.”
“We want a great many things that we can’t get,” returned Roland, in a provokingly light tone. “I’ll pay you as soon as I can, man; you needn’t be afraid.”
“I’m not exactly afraid,” spoke the man. “I suppose if it came to it, Lady Augusta would see that I had the money.”
“You hold your tongue about Lady Augusta. What’s Lady Augusta to you? Any odds and ends that I may owe, have nothing to do with Lady Augusta. Look here, Simms, I’ll pay you next week.”
“You have said that so many times, Mr. Yorke.”
“At any rate, I’ll pay you part of it next week, if I can’t the whole. I will, upon my honour. There! now you know that I shall keep my word.”
Apparently satisfied, the man departed, and Roland lounged into the office again with the same idle movements that he had left it.
“It was that confounded Simms,” grumbled he. “Jenkins, why did you say I was in?”
“You did not tell me to say the contrary, sir. He came yesterday, but you were out then.”
“What does he want?” asked Arthur.
“Wanted me to pay him a trifle I owe; but it’s not convenient to do it till next week. What an Eden this lower world might be, if debt had never been invented!”
“You need not get into debt,” said Arthur. “It is not compulsory.”
“One might build a mud hut outside the town walls, and shut one’s self up in it, and eat herbs for dinner, and sleep upon rushes, and turn hermit for good!” retorted Roland. “You need not talk about debt, Channing.”
“I don’t owe much,” said Arthur, noting the significance of Yorke’s concluding sentence.
“If you don’t, some one else does.”
“Who?”
“Ask Hamish.”
Arthur went on writing with a sinking heart. There was an undercurrent of fear running within him—had been for some time—that Hamish did owe money on his own private score. But this allusion to it was not pleasant.
“How much do you owe?” went on Roland.
“Oh, a twenty-pound note would pay my debts, and leave me something out of it,” said Arthur, in a joking tone. The fact was, that he did not owe a shilling to any one. “Jenkins, do you know what I am to set about next?” he continued; “I have filled in this lease.”
Jenkins was beginning to look amidst some papers at his elbow, in answer to the appeal; but at that moment Mr. Galloway entered, and despatched Arthur to get a cheque cashed at the bank.
CHAPTER VI. – LADY AUGUSTA YORKE AT HOME
“If you don’t put away that trash, Caroline, and go upstairs and practise, I’ll make you go! Strewing the table in that manner! Look what a pickle the room is in!”
The words came from Lady Augusta Yorke, a tall, dark woman, with high cheek-bones; and they were spoken at a height that might not have been deemed orthodox at court. Miss Caroline Yorke, a young demoiselle, with a “net” that was more frequently off her head than on it, slip-shod shoes, and untidy stockings, had placed a quantity of mulberry leaves on the centre table, and a silkworm on each leaf. She leisurely proceeded with her work, bringing forth more silkworms from her paper trays, paying not the least attention to her mother. Lady Augusta advanced, and treated her to a slight tap on the ear, her favourite mode of correcting her children.
“Now, mamma! What’s that for?”
“Do you hear me, you disobedient child? I will have this rubbish put away, I say. Goodness, Martha! don’t bring any one in here!” broke off Lady Augusta, as a maid appeared, showing in a visitor. “Oh, it is you, William! I don’t mind you. Come in.”
It was the Reverend William Yorke who entered. He was not altogether a favourite of Lady Augusta’s. Though only distantly related to her late husband, he yet bore the name of Yorke; and when he came to Helstonleigh (for he was not a native of the place), and became a candidate for a vacant minor canonry, Lady Augusta’s pride had taken fire. The minor canons were looked upon by the exclusives of the cathedral as holding a very inferior position amidst the clergy, and she resented that one belonging to her should descend to set up his place amongst them.
Mr. Yorke shook hands with Lady Augusta, and then turned to look at the leaves and silkworms. “Are you doing that for ornament, Caroline?”
“Ornament!” wrathfully cried Lady Augusta. “She is doing it to waste time, and to provoke me.”
“No, I am not, mamma,” denied Miss Caroline. “My poor silkworms never have anything but lettuce leaves. Tod brought these for me from the bishop’s garden, and I am looking at the silkworms enjoying the change.”
“Tod is in hot water,” remarked Mr. Yorke. “He was fighting with another boy as I came through the cloisters.”
“Then he’ll come home with his clothes torn, as he did the last time he fought!” exclaimed Lady Augusta, in consternation. “I think no one ever had such a set of children as mine!” she peevishly continued. “The boys boisterous as so many wild animals, and the girls enough to drive one crazy, with their idle, disobedient ways. Look at this room, William! encumbered from one end to the other! things thrown out of hand by Caroline and Fanny! As to lessons, they never open one. For three days I have never ceased telling Caroline to go and practise, and she has not attempted to obey me! I shall go out of my mind with one thing or another; I know I shall! Nice dunces they’ll grow up.”
“Go and practise now, Caroline,” said Mr. Yorke. “I will put your silkworms up for you.”
Caroline pouted. “I hate practising.”
He laid his hand gently upon her, gazing at her with his dark, pleasant eyes, reproachful now; “But you do not hate obeying your mamma? You must never let it come to that, Caroline.”
She suffered him to lead her to the door, went docilely enough to the drawing-room, and sat down to the piano. Oh, for a little better training for those children! Mr. Yorke began placing the silkworms in the trays, and Lady Augusta went on grumbling.
“It is a dreadful fate—to be left a widow with a heap of unruly children who will not be controlled! I must find a governess for the girls, and then I shall be free from them for a few hours in the day. I thought I would try and save the money, and teach them myself; but I might just as well attempt to teach so many little wild Indians! I am not fitted for teaching; it is beyond me. Don’t you think you could hear of a governess, William? You go about so much.”
“I have heard of one since I saw you yesterday,” he replied. “A young lady, whom you know, is anxious to take a situation, and I think she might suit you.”
“Whom I know?” cried Lady Augusta. “Who is it?”
“Miss Channing.”
Lady Augusta looked up in astonishment. “Is she going out as governess? That comes of losing this lawsuit. She has lost no time in the decision.”
“When an unpalatable step has to be taken, the sooner it is set about, the less will be the cost,” remarked Mr. Yorke.
“Unpalatable! you may well say that. This will be the climax, will it not, William?”
“Climax of what?”
“Of all the unpleasantness that has attended your engagement with Miss Channing—”
“I beg your pardon, Lady Augusta,” was the interruption of Mr. Yorke. “No unpleasantness whatever has attended my engagement with Miss Channing.”
“I think so, for I consider her beneath you; and, therefore, that it is nothing but unpleasant from beginning to end. The Channings are very well in their way, but they are not equal to the Yorkes. You might make this a pretext for giving her up.”
Mr. Yorke laughed. “I think her all the more worthy of me. The only question that is apt to arise within me is, whether I am worthy of her. As we shall never agree upon this point, Lady Augusta, it may not be worth while to discuss it. About the other thing? I believe she would make an admirable governess for Caroline and Fanny, if you could obtain her.”
“Oh, I dare say she would do that. She is a lady, and has been well educated. Would she want a large salary?”
“Forty guineas a year, to begin with.”
Lady Augusta interrupted him with a scream. “I never could give half of it! I am sure I never could. What with housekeeping expenses, and milliners’ bills, and visiting, and the boys everlastingly dragging money out of me, I have scarcely anything to spare for education.”
“Yet it is more essential than all the rest. Your income, properly apportioned, would afford—”
Another scream from Lady Augusta. Her son Theodore—Tod, familiarly—burst into the room, jacketless, his hair entangled, blood upon his face, and his shirt-sleeves in shreds.
“You rebellious, wicked fright of a boy!” was the salutation of my lady, when she could recover breath.
“Oh, it’s nothing, mamma. Don’t bother,” replied Master Tod, waving her off. “I have been going into Pierce, senior, and have polished him off with a jolly good licking. He won’t get me into a row again, I’ll bet.”
“What row did he get you into?”
“He’s a nasty, sneaking tattler, and he took and told something to Gaunt, and Gaunt put me up for punishment, and I had a caning from old Pye. I vowed I’d pay Pierce out for it, and I have done it, though he is a sight bigger than me.”
“What was it about?” inquired Mr. Yorke. “The damaged surplice?”
“Damaged surplice be hanged!” politely retorted the young gentleman, who, in gaining the victory, appeared to have lost his temper. “It was something concerning our lessons at the third desk, if you must know.”
“You might be civil, Tod,” said Lady Augusta. “Look at your shirt! Who, do you suppose, is going to mend that?”
“It can go unmended,” responded Master Tod. “I wish it was the fashion to go without clothes! They are always getting torn.”
“I wish it was!” heartily responded my lady.
That same evening, in returning to her house from a visit, Constance Channing encountered Mr. Yorke. He turned to walk with her to the door.
“I intended to call this afternoon, Constance, but was prevented from doing so,” he observed. “I have spoken to Lady Augusta.”
“Well?” she answered with a smile and a blush.
“She would be very glad of you; but the difficulty, at first, appeared to be about salary. However, I pointed out a few home truths, and she admitted that if the girls were to be educated, she supposed she must pay for it. She will give you forty guineas a year; but you are to call upon her and settle other details. To-morrow, if it should be convenient to you.”
Constance clasped her hands. “I am so pleased!” she exclaimed, in a low tone.
“So am I,” said Mr. Yorke. “I would rather you went to Lady Augusta’s than to a stranger’s. And do, Constance, try and make those poor girls more what they ought to be.”
“That I shall try, you may be sure, William. Are you not coming in?”
“No,” said Mr. Yorke, who had held out his hand on reaching the door. He was pretty constant in his evening visits to the Channings, but he had made an engagement for this one with a brother clergyman.
Constance entered. She looked in the study for her brothers, but only Arthur was there. He was leaning his elbow upon the table in a thoughtful mood.
“Where are they all?” inquired Constance.
“Tom and Charles have gone to the cricket match. I don’t think Hamish has come in.”
“Why did you not go to cricket also?”
“I don’t know,” said Arthur. “I did not feel much inclination for cricket this evening.”
“You looked depressed, Arthur, but I have some good news for you,” Constance said, bending over him with a bright smile. “It is settled about my going out, and I am to have forty guineas a year. Guess where it is to?”
Arthur threw his arm round Constance, and they stood together, looking at the trailing honeysuckle just outside the window. “Tell me, darling.”
“It is to Lady Augusta’s. William has been talking to her, and she would like to have me. Does it not seem lucky to find it so soon?”
“Lucky, Constance?”
“Ah, well! you know what I think, Arthur, though I did say ‘lucky,’” returned Constance. “I know it is God who is helping us.”
Very beautiful, very touching, was the simple trustfulness reposed in God, by Constance and Arthur Channing. The good seed had been sown on good ground, and was bringing forth its fruit.
“I was deep in a reverie when you interrupted me, Constance,” Arthur resumed. “Something seems to whisper to me that this loss, which we regard as a great misfortune, may turn out for good in the end.”
“In the end! It may have come for our good now,” said Constance. “Perhaps I wanted my pride lowered,” she laughed; “and this has come to do it, and is despatching me out, a meek governess.”
“Perhaps we all wanted it,” cried Arthur, meaningly. “There are other bad habits it may stop, besides pride.” He was thinking of Hamish and his propensity for spending. “Forty guineas you are to have?”
“Yes,” said Constance. “Arthur, do you know a scheme that I have in my head? I have been thinking of it all day.”
“What is it? Stay! here is some one coming in. It is Hamish.”
Hamish entered with the account-books under his arm, preparatory to going over them with his father. Constance drew him to her.
“Hamish, I have a plan in my head, if we can only carry it out. I am going to tell it you.”
“One that will set the river on fire?” cried gay, laughing Hamish.
“If we—you and I, and Arthur—can only manage to earn enough money, and if we can observe strict economy at home, who knows but we may send papa to the German baths yet?”
A cloud came over Hamish’s face, and his smile faded. “I don’t see how that is to be done.”
“But you have not heard of my good luck. I am going to Lady Augusta’s, and am to have forty guineas a year. Now, if you and Arthur will help, it may be easy. Oh, Hamish, it would be worth any effort—any struggle. Think how it would be rewarded. Papa restored to health! to freedom from pain!”
A look of positive pain seated itself on Hamish’s brow. “Yes,” he sighed, “I wish it could be done.”
“But you do not speak hopefully.”
“Because, if I must tell you the truth, I do not feel hopefully. I fear we could not do it: at least until things are brighter.”
“If we do our very best, we might receive great help, Hamish.”
“What help?” he asked.
“God’s help,” she whispered.
Hamish smiled. He had not yet learnt what Constance had. Besides, Hamish was just then in a little trouble on his own account: he knew very well that his funds were wanted in another quarter.
“Constance, dear, do not look at me so wistfully. I will try with all my might and main, to help my father; but I fear I cannot do anything yet. I mean to draw in my expenses,” he went on, laughing: “to live like any old screw of a miser, and never squander a halfpenny where a farthing will suffice.”
He took his books and went in to Mr. Channing. Constance began training the honeysuckle, her mind busy, and a verse of Holy Writ running through it—“Commit thy way unto the Lord, and put thy trust in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.”
“Ay!” she murmured, glancing upwards at the blue evening sky: “our whole, whole trust in patient reliance; and whatsoever is best for us will be ours.”
Annabel stole up to Constance, and entwined her arms caressingly round her. Constance turned, and parted the child’s hair upon her forehead with a gentle hand.
“Am I to find a little rebel in you, Annabel? Will you not try and make things smooth for me?”
“Oh, Constance, dear!” was the whispered answer: “it was only my fun last night, when I said you should not take me for lessons in an evening. I will study all day by myself, and get my lessons quite ready for you, so as to give you no trouble in the evening. Would you like to hear me my music now?”
Constance bent to kiss her. “No, dear child; there is no necessity for my taking you in an evening, until my days shall be occupied at Lady Augusta Yorke’s.”
CHAPTER VII. – MR. KETCH
Mrs. Channing sat with her children. Breakfast was over, and she had the Bible open before her. Never, since their earliest years of understanding, had she failed to assemble them together for a few minutes’ reading, morning and evening. Not for too long at once; she knew the value of not tiring young children, when she was leading them to feel an interest in sacred things. She would take Hamish, a little fellow of three years old, upon her knee, read to him a short Bible story, suited to his age, and then talk to him. Talk to him in a soft, loving, gentle tone, of God, of Jesus, of heaven; of his duties in this world; of what he must do to attain to everlasting peace in the next. Day by day, step by step, untiringly, unceasingly, had she thus laboured, to awaken good in the child’s heart, to train it to holiness, to fill it with love of God. As the other children came on in years, she, in like manner, took them. From simple Bible stories to more advanced Bible stories, and thence to the Bible itself; with other books at times and seasons: a little reading, a little conversation, Gospel truths impressed upon them from her earnest lips. Be you very sure that where this great duty of all duties is left unfulfilled by a mother, a child is not brought up as it ought to be. Win your child towards heaven in his early years, and he will not forget it when he is old.
It will be as a very shield, compassing him about through life. He may wander astray—there is no telling—in the heyday of his hot-blooded youth, for the world’s temptations are as a running fire, scorching all that venture into its heat; but the good foundation has been laid, and the earnest, incessant prayers have gone up, and he will find his way home again.
Mrs. Channing closed the Bible, and spoke, as usual. It was all that teaching should be. Good lessons as to this world; loving pictures of that to come. She had contrived to impress them, not with the too popular notion that heaven was a far-off place up in the skies some vague, millions of miles away, and to which we might be millions of years off; but that it was very near to them: that God was ever present with them; and that Death, when he came, should be looked upon as a friend, not an enemy. Hamish was three and twenty years old now, and he loved those minutes of instruction as he had done when a child. They had borne their fruit for him, and for all: though not, perhaps, in an equal degree.
The reading over, and the conversation over, she gave the book to Constance to put away, and the boys rose, and prepared to enter upon their several occupations. It was not the beginning of the day for Tom and Charles, for they had been already to early school.
“Is papa so very much worse to-day, mamma?” asked Tom.
“I did not say he was worse, Tom,” replied Mrs. Channing. “I said he had passed a restless night, and felt tired and weak.”
“Thinking over that confounded lawsuit,” cried hot, thoughtless Tom.
“Thomas!” reproved Mrs. Channing.
“I beg your pardon, mamma. Unorthodox words are the fashion in school, and one catches them up. I forget myself when I repeat them before you.”
“To repeat them before me is no worse than repeating them behind me, Tom.”
Tom laughed. “Very true, mamma. It was not a logical excuse. But I am sure the news, brought to us by the mail on Wednesday night, is enough to put a saint out of temper. Had there been anything unjust in it, had the money not been rightly ours, it would have been different; but to be deprived of what is legally our own—”
“Not legally—as it turns out,” struck in Hamish.
“Justly, then,” said Tom. “It’s too bad—especially as we don’t know what we shall do without it.”
“Tom, you are not to look at the dark side of things,” cried Constance, in a pretty, wilful, commanding manner. “We shall do very well without it: it remains to be proved whether we shall not do better than with it.”
“Children, I wish to say a word to you upon this subject,” said Mrs. Channing. “When the news arrived, I was, you know, almost overwhelmed by it; not seeing, as Tom says, what we were to do without the money. In the full shock of the disappointment, it wore for me its worst aspect; a far more sombre one than the case really merited. But, now that I have had time to see it in its true light, my disappointment has subsided. I consider that we took a completely wrong view of it. Had the decision deprived us of the income we enjoy, then indeed it would have been grievous; but in reality it deprives us of nothing. Not one single privilege that we possessed before, does it take from us; not a single outlay will it cost us. We looked to this money to do many things with; but its not coming renders us no worse off than we were. Expecting it has caused us to get behindhand with our bills, which we must gradually pay off in the best way we can; it takes from us the power to article Arthur, and it straitens us in many ways, for, as you grow up, you grow more expensive. This is the extent of the ill, except—”
“Oh, mamma, you forget! The worst ill of all is, that papa cannot now go to Germany.”
“I was about to say that, Arthur. But other means for his going thither may be found. Understand me, my dears: I do not see any means, or chance of means, at present: you must not fancy that; but it is possible that they may arise with the time of need. One service, at any rate, the decision has rendered me.”
“Service?” echoed Tom.
“Yes,” smiled Mrs. Channing. “It has proved to me that my children are loving and dutiful. Instead of repining, as some might, they are already seeking how they may make up, themselves, for the money that has not come. And Constance begins it.”
“Don’t fear us, mother,” cried Hamish, with his sunny smile. “We will be of more use to you yet than the money would have been.”
They dispersed—Hamish to his office, Arthur to Mr. Galloway’s, Tom and Charles to the cloisters, that famous playground of the college school. Stolen pleasures, it is said, are sweetest; and, just because there had been a stir lately amongst the cathedral clergy, touching the desirability of forbidding the cloisters to the boys for play, so much the more eager were they to frequent them.
As Arthur was going down Close Street, he encountered Mr. Williams, the cathedral organist, striding along with a roll of music in his hand. He was Arthur’s music-master. When Arthur Channing was in the choir, a college schoolboy, he had displayed considerable taste for music; and it was decided that he should learn the organ. He had continued to take lessons after he left the choir, and did so still.
“I was thinking of coming round to speak to you to-day, Mr. Williams.”
“What about?” asked the organist. “Anything pressing?”
“Well, you have heard, of course, that that suit is given against us, so I don’t mean to continue the organ. They have said nothing to me at home; but it is of no use spending money that might be saved. But I see you are in too great a hurry, to stay to talk now.”
“Hurry! I am hurried off my legs,” cried the organist. “If a dozen or two of my pupils would give up learning, as you talk of doing, I should only be obliged to them. I have more work than I can attend to. And now Jupp must go and lay himself up, and I have the services to attend myself, morning and afternoon!”
Mr. Jupp was assistant-organist. An apprentice to Mr. Williams, but just out of his time.
“What’s the matter with Jupp?” asked Arthur.
“A little bit of fever, and a great deal of laziness,” responded Mr. Williams. “He is the laziest fellow alive. Since his uncle died, and that money came to him, he doesn’t care a straw how things go. He was copyist to the cathedral, and he gave that up last week. I have asked Sandon, the lay-clerk, if he will take the copying, but he declines. He is another lazy one.”
The organist hurried off. Arthur strove to detain him for another word or two, but it was of no use. So he continued his way to Mr. Galloway’s.
Busy enough were his thoughts there. His fingers were occupied with writing, but his mind went roaming without leave. This post of copyist of music to the cathedral, which appeared to be going begging; why should not he undertake it, if Mr. Williams would give it to him? He was quite able to do so, and though he very much disliked music-copying, that was nothing: he was not going to set up dislikes, and humour them. He had only a vague idea what might be the remuneration; ten, or twelve, or fifteen pounds a year, he fancied it might bring in. Better that, than nothing; it would be a beginning to follow in the wake that Constance had commenced; and he could do it of an evening, or at other odd times. “I won’t lose an hour in asking for it,” thought Arthur.
At one o’clock, when he was released from the office, he ran through the Boundaries to the cloisters, intending to pass through them on his way to the house of the organist, that being rather a nearer road to it, than if he had gone round the town. The sound of the organ, however, struck upon his ear, causing him to assume that it was the organist who was playing. Arthur tried the cathedral door, found it open, and went it.
It was Mr. Williams. He had been trying some new music, and rose from the organ as Arthur reached the top of the stairs, no very pleasant expression on his countenance.
“What is the matter?” asked Arthur, perceiving that something had put him out.
“I hate ingratitude,” responded Mr. Williams. “Jenkins,” he called out to the old bedesman, who had been blowing for him, “you may go to your dinner; I shan’t want you any more now.”
Old Jenkins hobbled down from the organ-loft, and Mr. Williams continued to Arthur:
“Would you believe that Jupp has withdrawn himself utterly?”
“From the college?” exclaimed Arthur.
“From the college, and from me. His father comes to me, an hour ago, and says he is sure Jupp’s in a bad state of health, and he intends to send him to his relatives in the Scotch mountains for some months, to try and brace him up. Not a word of apology, for leaving me at a pinch.”
“It will be very inconvenient for you,” said Arthur. “I suppose that new apprentice of yours is of no use yet for the services?”
“Use!” irascibly retorted Mr. Williams, “he could not play a psalm if it were to save his life. I depended upon Jupp. It was an understood thing that he should remain with me as assistant; had it not been, I should have taken good care to bring somebody on to replace him. As to attending the services on week-days myself, it is next door to an impossibility. If I do, my teaching will be ruined.”