killed, beyond one occasion when he attended to assure himself that all was done in the most merciful way and had ended by being violently sick into the bowl of pig’s blood.  In hunting Ishmael found, like many another, that his own excitement helped him to bear with the thought of the fox’s pain, though he was always glad, in guilty secret, when there was no kill.  It was not this idiosyncrasy that troubled Boase; it was the social questions that hunting evoked.  Boase, who also followed to hounds, felt his heart glow to see how well the boy was received; for Ishmael’s surly shyness had passed into a new phase, expressed by a rather charming deference mingled with independence which appealed to the brusque, goodhearted members of the “county,” who went to make up the very mixed hunt in that sparsely-peopled district.

Still, all was not well.  Vassie had grown in discontent, Annie in melancholy.  The girl herself might—­probably would, with her beauty and adaptability—­have won a place with Ishmael had it not been for the mother.  Annie’s touchy pride, mingled with what Vassie frankly called her “impossibleness,” made the situation hopeless, for the former quality would not let her efface herself, and the latter prevented her daughter being called upon.  Therefore, although Ishmael went out now and again and had struck up a fairly intimate acquaintance with one or two nice families within a radius of ten miles, yet he had no sort of home life which could satisfy him for long.

The only thing Boase saw to be thankful for was that Ishmael’s thoughts had not been driven on to Phoebe, and that was probably only because it had never occurred to Ishmael as a possible contingency.  He had been so healthily occupied and was so used to Phoebe.  Also, Vassie, in her discontent, spent the time visiting her rather second-class friends in Plymouth as much as possible, and, even when she did not insist on sweeping Phoebe with her, intercourse with the mill stopped almost entirely.  Annie never pretended to any liking for the helpless Phoebe, who could not even answer her back when she insulted her, as she frequently did all timid people.  Never since that accidental touch of quaintness on the first evening had Ishmael discovered any kindred habit of mind in Phoebe, and she, in her sweetly-obtuse way, sometimes wondered that Ishmael did not want to be more with her.

It was not a common failing with the chaps around that district.  Phoebe’s peculiar allure of utter softness was not one that could remain unfelt even among the slow and primitive young men she met day by day, or who gazed at her dewy mouth and eyes in the church which, for the sake of the vision, they attended instead of chapel.  Vassie, who was really a beauty, they only feared.  At any moment, if he were not drawn outside himself and the affairs of Cloom, that sudden curious twist of vision which means glamour might occur for Ishmael as he looked at Phoebe.  If there were no rich enough materials at hand to make a fuller life for the boy, then, thought the Parson, with logic, it must be brought to him.  The difficulty was Ishmael himself.