During the hours that the check was away from him, Harry had told his father that perhaps, even yet, he might change his purpose as to going to Messrs. Beilby & Burton.  He did not know, he said, but he was still in doubt.  This had sprung from some chance question which his father had asked, and which had seemed to demand an answer.  Mr. Clavering greatly disliked the scheme of life which his son had made, Harry’s life hitherto had been prosperous and very creditable.  He had gone early to Cambridge, and at twenty-two had become a fellow of his college.  This fellowship he could hold for five or six years without going into orders.  It would then lead to a living, and would in the meantime afford a livelihood.  But, beyond this, Harry, with an energy which he certainly had not inherited from his father, had become a schoolmaster, and was already a rich man.  He had done more than well, and there was a great probability that between them they might be able to buy the next presentation to Clavering, when the time should come in which Sir Hugh should determine on selling it.  That Sir Hugh should give the family living to his cousin was never thought probable by any of the family at the rectory; but he might perhaps part with it under such circumstances on favorable terms.  For all these reasons the father was very anxious that his son should follow out the course for which he had been intended; but that he, being unenergetic and having hitherto done little for his son, should dictate to a young man who had been energetic, and who had done much for himself, was out of the question.  Harry, therefore, was to be the arbiter of his own fate.  But when Harry received back the check from Julia Brabazon, then he again returned to his resolution respecting Messrs. Beilby & Burton, and took the first opportunity of telling his father that such was the case.

After breakfast he followed his father into his study, and there, sitting in two easy chairs opposite to each other, they lit each a cigar.  Such was the reverend gentleman’s custom in the afternoon, and such also in the morning.  I do not know whether the smoking of four or five cigars daily by the parson of a parish may now-a-day be considered as a vice in him, but if so, it was the only vice with which Mr. Clavering could be charged.  He was a kind, soft-hearted, gracious man, tender to his wife, whom he ever regarded as the angel of his house, indulgent to his daughters, whom he idolized, ever patient with his parishioners, and awake—­though not widely awake—­to the responsibilities of his calling.  The world had been too comfortable for him, and also too narrow; so that he had sunk into idleness.  The world had given him much to eat and drink, but it had given him little to do, and thus he had gradually fallen away from his early purposes, till his energy hardly sufficed for the doing of that little.  His living gave him eight hundred a year; his wife’s fortune nearly doubled that.  He had married early, and had got his living