look.  In the same way, when he gathered that the Parson trusted him to tell the truth, and that no grievous consequences attended it, he gradually ceased to lie, though this took time, since lying with him, as with many children, had become an instinct.  Gradually the whole atmosphere of the Vicarage, with its shiny mahogany furniture, its faded rep curtains, its old prints and few unassuming miniatures of the quiet country gentlefolk who were Boase’s ancestors, its queer mingled smell of old books and lavender, all became part of Ishmael’s consciousness.

He had a great deal of freedom, once the morning’s lessons were over, for the Parson was a busy man and his parish many miles wide.  At first Boase had been rather worried about these spaces in Ishmael’s time, for there were no gentlefolk’s children for him to play with nearer than seven or eight miles, and it was a necessary part of the great plan to keep from undue familiarity with the village boys.  There was always Phoebe, but Ishmael was growing of an age to despise girls.  Besides, nice soft little thing that Phoebe was, she talked with a dialect as thick as treacle.  Eventually, however, it turned out that girls were to be Ishmael’s chief companions, and the Parson concluded it would do him no harm to be under what is commonly supposed to be a softening influence before plunging into the stern masculinities of St. Renny.  It was John-James who brought about the feminine factor in Ishmael’s days, some six months after the Vicarage period had begun.

It was early spring, the first rathe-primroses were showing their milk-fair faces on the cliff, and the light-green leaves were beginning to uncrumple on the wind-wilted elders, when John-James appeared on a mission of his own at the Vicarage.  There was a good deal of coming and going between the Manor and the Vicarage, for the Parson laid himself open to no charge of alienating affections, but this visit was quick with a portentousness beyond the normal.  To begin with, John-James asked for Mr. Boase instead of for Ishmael, and when he was shown into the study he stood revolving his cap in his hands and some weighty thought in his brain till the Parson bade him sit down and say what it was had brought him.  But John-James still stood and, his eyes fixed anxiously on the Parson, at last blurted out: 

“Mr. Boase, you’m tachen Ishmael things like gentry do belong to knaw, aren’t ’ee?”

“Why, yes,” said Boase.

“I want to knaw if ’ee’ll tache our Vassie too.  Archelaus, he’em too old, and thinks on naught but gwain with females, and Tom’s doen fine with Mr. Tonkin, and for me—­I’m not that class.  Farmen’s my traade.  But the maid, she’m so quick and clever, ’tes only fitty she should have her chance same as the lil’un.  She’s gwain to be ’ansome, white as a lily she is, and it’ll be better for she if she do have things to think of like the gentry.  For if Ishmael’s gentry, there’s no rason Vassie shoulden be.  They’m the same blood after all.  An’ it’s dangerous blood, Mr. Boase.”