The prospect which this offer of an engagement held out was certainly an attractive one.  The employment was likely to be both easy and agreeable; it was proposed to me at the autumn time of the year when I was least occupied; and the terms, judging by my personal experience in my profession, were surprisingly liberal.  I knew this; I knew that I ought to consider myself very fortunate if I succeeded in securing the offered employment—­and yet, no sooner had I read the memorandum than I felt an inexplicable unwillingness within me to stir in the matter.  I had never in the whole of my previous experience found my duty and my inclination so painfully and so unaccountably at variance as I found them now.

“Oh, Walter, your father never had such a chance as this!” said my mother, when she had read the note of terms and had handed it back to me.

“Such distinguished people to know,” remarked Sarah, straightening herself in the chair; “and on such gratifying terms of equality too!”

“Yes, yes; the terms, in every sense, are tempting enough,” I replied impatiently.  “But before I send in my testimonials, I should like a little time to consider——­”

“Consider!” exclaimed my mother.  “Why, Walter, what is the matter with you?”

“Consider!” echoed my sister.  “What a very extraordinary thing to say, under the circumstances!”

“Consider!” chimed in the Professor.  “What is there to consider about?  Answer me this!  Have you not been complaining of your health, and have you not been longing for what you call a smack of the country breeze?  Well! there in your hand is the paper that offers you perpetual choking mouthfuls of country breeze for four months’ time.  Is it not so?  Ha!  Again—­you want money.  Well!  Is four golden guineas a week nothing?  My-soul-bless-my-soul! only give it to me—­and my boots shall creak like the golden Papa’s, with a sense of the overpowering richness of the man who walks in them!  Four guineas a week, and, more than that, the charming society of two young misses! and, more than that, your bed, your breakfast, your dinner, your gorging English teas and lunches and drinks of foaming beer, all for nothing—­why, Walter, my dear good friend—­deuce-what-the-deuce!—­for the first time in my life I have not eyes enough in my head to look, and wonder at you!”

Neither my mother’s evident astonishment at my behaviour, nor Pesca’s fervid enumeration of the advantages offered to me by the new employment, had any effect in shaking my unreasonable disinclination to go to Limmeridge House.  After starting all the petty objections that I could think of to going to Cumberland, and after hearing them answered, one after another, to my own complete discomfiture, I tried to set up a last obstacle by asking what was to become of my pupils in London while I was teaching Mr. Fairlie’s young ladies to sketch from nature.  The obvious answer to this was, that the greater