Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/64

finding that some boys were near withdrew a few steps, “I have borrowed it at five per cent. from the farmer who used to occupy the farm next our field. You remember him.”

“But about paying him ?”

"I shall pay him by degrees ont of my stipend. No, Cornelius, it was no use to do the thing by halves. She promises to be a most attractive, not to aay beautiful, girl, I have seen that for years; and if her face is not her fortune, her face and her brains together will be, if I observe and contrive aright. That she shonid be, every inch of her, an accomplished and refined woman, was indispensable for the fulfilment of her destiny, and for moving onward and upward with us; and she'll do it, you will see. I'd half starve myself rather than take her away from that school now.”

They looked round the achool they were in. To Cornelius it was natural and familiar enough; but to Joshua, with his limited human sympathies, who had just dropped in from a superior sort of place, the sight jarred unpleasantly, as being that of something he had left behind. “I shall be glad when you are out of this,” he said, “and in your pulpit, and well through your first sermon.”

“You may as well say, inducted into my fat living, while you are about it,”

“Ah, well; don’t think lightly of the Church, There’s a fine work for any man of energy in the Church, as you'll find,” he said, fervidly. “Torrents of infidelity to be stemmed, new views of old subjects to be expounded, truths in spirit to be substitated for truths in the letter....” He lapsed into reverie with the vision of his career, persuading himself that it was ardor for Christianity which spurred him on, and not pride of place. He had shouldered a body