“We don’t want everybody,” said Miss Winifred.  “But you would like Miss Garth, mother, shouldn’t you?”

“My son’s choice shall be mine,” said Mrs. Farebrother, with majestic discretion, “and a wife would be most welcome, Camden.  You will want your whist at home when we go to Lowick, and Henrietta Noble never was a whist-player.” (Mrs. Farebrother always called her tiny old sister by that magnificent name.)

“I shall do without whist now, mother.”

“Why so, Camden?  In my time whist was thought an undeniable amusement for a good churchman,” said Mrs. Farebrother, innocent of the meaning that whist had for her son, and speaking rather sharply, as at some dangerous countenancing of new doctrine.

“I shall be too busy for whist; I shall have two parishes,” said the Vicar, preferring not to discuss the virtues of that game.

He had already said to Dorothea, “I don’t feel bound to give up St. Botolph’s.  It is protest enough against the pluralism they want to reform if I give somebody else most of the money.  The stronger thing is not to give up power, but to use it well.”

“I have thought of that,” said Dorothea.  “So far as self is concerned, I think it would be easier to give up power and money than to keep them.  It seems very unfitting that I should have this patronage, yet I felt that I ought not to let it be used by some one else instead of me.”

“It is I who am bound to act so that you will not regret your power,” said Mr. Farebrother.

His was one of the natures in which conscience gets the more active when the yoke of life ceases to gall them.  He made no display of humility on the subject, but in his heart he felt rather ashamed that his conduct had shown laches which others who did not get benefices were free from.

“I used often to wish I had been something else than a clergyman,” he said to Lydgate, “but perhaps it will be better to try and make as good a clergyman out of myself as I can.  That is the well-beneficed point of view, you perceive, from which difficulties are much simplified,” he ended, smiling.

The Vicar did feel then as if his share of duties would be easy.  But Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly—­something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.

Hardly a week later, Duty presented itself in his study under the disguise of Fred Vincy, now returned from Omnibus College with his bachelor’s degree.

“I am ashamed to trouble you, Mr. Farebrother,” said Fred, whose fair open face was propitiating, “but you are the only friend I can consult.  I told you everything once before, and you were so good that I can’t help coming to you again.”

“Sit down, Fred, I’m ready to hear and do anything I can,” said the Vicar, who was busy packing some small objects for removal, and went on with his work.

“I wanted to tell you—­” Fred hesitated an instant and then went on plungingly, “I might go into the Church now; and really, look where I may, I can’t see anything else to do.  I don’t like it, but I know it’s uncommonly hard on my father to say so, after he has spent a good deal of money in educating me for it.”  Fred paused again an instant, and then repeated, “and I can’t see anything else to do.”