Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/66

Cornelius broke the silence with a whisper: “He has called on me !”

The living pulses died on Joshua's face, which grew arid as a clinker. “When was that?” he asked, quickly.

"Last week,”

“How did he get here—go many miles?”

“Came by railway. He came to ask for money.”

"Ah!"

“He says he will call on you.”

Joshua replied resignedly, The theme of their conversation spoiled his buoyancy for that afternoon. He returned in the evening, Cornelius accompanying him to the station; but he did not read in the train which took him back to the Fountall Theological College, as he had done on the way ont. That ineradicable trouble still remained as a squalid spot in the expanse of his life. He sat with the other students in the cathedral choir next day; and the recollection of the trouble obscured the purple splendor thrown by the panes upon the floor.

It was afternoon, All was as still in the close as a cathedral green can be between the Sunday services, and the incessant cawing of the rooke was the only sound. Joshua Halborough had finished his ascetic lanch, and had gone into the library, where he stood for a few moments looking ont of the large window facing the green. He saw walking slowly across it a man in a fustian coat and a battered white hat with a much-raffed nap, having upon bia arm a tall gypay woman wearing long brass earrings. The man was staring quizzically at the west front of the cathedral, and Halborough recognized in him the form and features of his father. Who the woman was he knew not, Almost as soon as Joshua became conacious of these things, the subdean, who was also the principal of the college, and of whom the young man stood in more