 bad
as the rubbishy literature that people choke their minds with. It doesn't make
one so dull. Our wittiest men have often been lawyers. Any orderly way of
looking at things as cases and evidence seems to me better than a perpetual wash
of odds and ends bearing on nothing in particular. And then, from a higher point
of view, the foundations and the growth of law make the most interesting aspects
of philosophy and history. Of course there will be a good deal that is
troublesome, drudging, perhaps exasperating. But the great prizes in life can't
be won easily - I see that.«
    »Well, my boy, the best augury of a man's success in his profession is that
he thinks it the finest in the world. But I fancy it is so with most work when a
man goes into it with a will. Brewitt, the blacksmith, said to me the other day
that his 'prentice had no mind to his trade; and yet, sir, said Brewitt, what
would a young fellow have if he doesn't like the blacksmithing?«
    The Rector cherished a fatherly delight, which he allowed to escape him only
in moderation. Warham, who had gone to India, he had easily borne parting with,
but Rex was that romance of later life which a man sometimes finds in a son whom
he recognises as superior to himself, picturing a future eminence for him
according to a variety of famous examples. It was only to his wife that he said
with decision, »Rex will be a distinguished man, Nancy, I am sure of it - as
sure as Paley's father was about his son.«
    »Was Paley an old bachelor?« said Mrs. Gascoigne.
    »That is hardly to the point, my dear,« said the Rector, who did not
remember that irrelevant detail. And Mrs. Gascoigne felt that she had spoken
rather weakly.
    This quiet trotting of time at the Rectory was shared by the group who had
exchanged the faded dignity of Offendene for the low white house not a mile off,
well enclosed with evergreens, and known to the villagers as »Jodson's.« Mrs.
Davilow's delicate face showed only a slight deepening of its mild melancholy,
her hair only a few more silver lines, in consequence of the last year's trials;
the four girls had bloomed out a little from being less in the shade; and the
good Jocosa preserved her serviceable neutrality towards the pleasures and
glories of the world as things made for those who were not »in a
