“Don’t misinterpret me, Mary. I mean out of reach of helping her in any way. I was of little use to her before. I could not save little Armine from those brutal bullies, and never suspected the abuse that engulphed Bobus. I am not fit for a schoolmaster.”
“To tell the truth, I doubt whether you have enough high spirits or geniality.”
“That’s the very thing! I can’t get into the boys, or prevent their thinking me a Don. I had hoped there was improvement, but the revelations of the half-year have convinced me that I knew just nothing at all about it.”
“Have you thought what you will do?”
“As soon as I get home, I shall send in my notice of resignation at Midsummer. That will see out her last boy, if he stays even so long.”
“And then?”
“I shall go for a year to a theological college, and test my fitness to offer myself for Holy Orders.”
A look of satisfaction on his sister’s part made him add, “Perhaps you were disappointed that I was not ordained on my fellowship seven years ago.”
“Certainly I was; but I was in Russia, and I thought you knew best, so I said nothing.”
“You were right. You would only have heard what would have made you anxious. Not that there was much to alarm you, but it is not good for any one to be left so entirely without home influences as I was all the time you spent abroad. I fell among a set of daring talkers, who thought themselves daring thinkers; and though the foundations were never disturbed with me, I was not disposed to bind myself more closely to what might not bear investigation, and I did not like the aspect of clerical squabbles on minutiae. There was a tide against the life that carried me along with it, half from sound, half from unsound, motives, and I shrank from the restraint, outward and inward.”