“That’s nonsense, Harry,” said his mother.  “If he can be comfortable coming here, there can be no reason why he should be uncomfortable.  It would be an injustice to him to ask him to go, and a great trouble to your father to find another curate that would suit him so well.”  There could be no doubt whatever as to the latter proposition, and therefore it was quietly argued that Mr. Saul’s fault, if there had been a fault, should be condoned.  On the next day he came to the rectory, and they were all astonished at the ease with which he bore himself.  It was not that he affected any special freedom of manner, or that he altogether avoided any change in his mode of speaking to them.  A slight blush came upon his sallow face as he first spoke to Mrs. Clavering, and he hardly did more than say a single word to Fanny.  But he carried himself as though conscious of what he had done, but in no degree ashamed of the doing it.  The Rector’s manner to him was stiff and formal; seeing which, Mrs. Clavering spoke to him gently, and with a smile.  “I saw you were a little hard on him, and therefore I tried to make up for it,” said she afterward.  “You were quite right,” said the husband.  “You always are.  But I wish he had not made such a fool of himself.  It will never be the same thing with him again.”  Harry hardly spoke to Mr. Saul the first time he met him, all of which Mr. Saul understood perfectly.

“Clavering,” he said to Harry, a day or two after this, “I hope there is to be no difference between you and me.”

“Difference!  I don’t know what you mean by difference.”

“We were good friends, and I hope that we are to remain so.  No doubt you know what has taken place between me and your sister.”

“Oh, yes; I have been told, of course.”

“What I mean is, that I hope you are not going to quarrel with me on that account?  What I did, is it not what you would have done in my position—­only you would have done it successfully?”

“I think a fellow should have some income, you know.”

“Can you say that you would have waited for income before you spoke of marriage?”

“I think it might have been better that you should have gone to my father.”

“It may be that that is the rule in such things, but if so, I do not know it.  Would she have liked that better?”

“Well; I can’t say.”

You are engaged?  Did you go to the young lady’s family first?”

“I can’t say I did; but I think I had given them some ground to expect it.  I fancy they all knew what I was about.  But it’s over now; and I don’t know that we need say anything more about it.”

“Certainly not.  Nothing can be said that would be of any use; but I do not think I have done anything that you should resent.”

“Resent is a strong word.  I don’t resent it, or, at any rate, I won’t; and there may be an end of it.”  After this, Harry was more gracious with Mr. Saul, having an idea that the curate had made some sort of apology for what he had done.  But that, I fancy, was by no means Mr. Saul’s view of the case.  Had he offered to marry the daughter of the Archbishop of Canterbury, instead of the daughter of the Rector of Clavering, he would not have imagined that his doing so needed an apology.