Charles Porkington, M.A., sometime fellow of St. Swithin, was born of humble parents.  He was educated, with a due regard for economy, in the mathematics by his father, and in the prevailing theology of the district by his mother.  The village schoolmaster had also assisted in the completion of his education by teaching him a little bad Latin.  He was ultimately sent to college, his parents inferring that he would make a success of the study of books, because he had always shown a singular inaptitude for anything else.  At college he had read hard.  The common sights and sounds of University life had been unheeded by him.  They passed before his eyes, and they entered into his ears, but his mind refused to receive any impression from them.  After taking a high degree, and being elected a fellow, he had written a novel of a strongly melodramatic cast, describing college life, and showing such an intimate acquaintance with the obscurer parts of it, that a great many ladies declared that “they always thought so;—­it was just as they supposed.”  The novel, however, did not meet with much success, and he then turned to the more lucrative but far less noble occupation of “coaching.”  He could not be said to be absolutely unintellectual.  As he had not profited by the experience of life, so he had not been contaminated by it.  He was moral, chiefly in a negative sense, and was not inclined to irreligion.  The faith of his parents sat, perhaps, uncomfortably upon him; and he had not sufficient strength of mind to adopt a new pattern.  He was in short an amiable mathematician, and a feeble classic; and I think that is all that could be said of him with any certainty.  There seemed to be an absence of character which might be called characteristic, and a feebleness of will so absolute as to disarm contempt.

A portion of Porkington’s hard earned gains was transmitted regularly to his two aged parents, while he himself, partly from habit and partly from indifference, lived as frugally as possible.

“Bless me!” cried Mrs. Porkington, within six months of her marriage, “To think that you should have squandered such large sums of money upon people who seem to have got on very well without them.”

“My dear,” replied he, “they are very poor, and in want of many comforts.”

“Of course I am sorry they cannot have them now,” retorted she, “and it is therefore a pity they ever should have had them.”

Porkington sighed slightly, but had already learned not to contend, if he could remember not to do so.  Mrs. Porkington was of large stature and majestic carriage; and had moreover a voice sufficiently powerful to keep order in an Irish brigade, or to command a vessel in a storm without the assistance of a trumpet.  Mr. Porkington, on the other hand, was a little, dry, pale, plain man, with an abstracted and nervous manner, and a voice that had never grown up so as to match even the little body from which it came,