“Ah, sir, he seems as if he had no heart to
stir out again, unless for something dreadful.”
“Courage! I will call again in the evening,
and then you just take me up to Tom’s room,
and leave me there to make friends with him, as I
have with you. Don’t say a word about me
in the meanwhile.”
“But—”
“‘But,’ Mrs. Bowles, is a word that
cools many a warm impulse, stifles many a kindly thought,
puts a dead stop to many a brotherly deed. Nobody
would ever love his neighbour as himself if he listened
to all the Buts that could be said on the other side
of the question.”
KENELM now bent his way towards the parsonage, but
just as he neared its glebe-lands he met a gentleman
whose dress was so evidently clerical that he stopped
and said,—
“Have I the honour to address Mr. Lethbridge?”
“That is my name,” said the clergyman,
smiling pleasantly. “Anything I can do
for you?”
“Yes, a great deal, if you will let me talk
to you about a few of your parishioners.”
“My parishioners! I beg your pardon, but
you are quite a stranger to me, and, I should think,
to the parish.”
“To the parish,—no, I am quite at
home in it; and I honestly believe that it has never
known a more officious busybody, thrusting himself
into its most private affairs.”
Mr. Lethbridge stared, and, after a short pause, said,
“I have heard of a young man who has been staying
at Mr. Saunderson’s, and is indeed at this moment
the talk of the village. You are—”
“That young man. Alas! yes.”
“Nay,” said Mr. Lethbridge, kindly, “I
cannot myself, as a minister of the Gospel, approve
of your profession, and, if I might take the liberty,
I would try and dissuade you from it; but still, as
for the one act of freeing a poor girl from the most
scandalous persecution, and administering, though
in a rough way, a lesson to a savage brute who has
long been the disgrace and terror of the neighbourhood,
I cannot honestly say that it has my condemnation.
The moral sense of a community is generally a right
one: you have won the praise of the village.
Under all the circumstances, I do not withhold mine.
You woke this morning and found yourself famous.
Do not sigh ‘Alas.’”
“Lord Byron woke one morning and found himself
famous, and the result was that he sighed ‘Alas’
for the rest of his life. If there be two things
which a wise man should avoid, they are fame and love.
Heaven defend me from both!”
Again the parson stared; but being of compassionate
nature, and inclined to take mild views of everything
that belongs to humanity, he said, with a slight inclination
of his head,—
