“I don’t know that. Let those who are fit for nothing else go and drone over A B C with ragged children, if they like. It is just their vocation; but there is an order in everything, Margaret, and minds of a superior kind are intended for higher purposes, not to be wasted in this manner.”
“I don’t know whether they are wasted,” said Margaret, not quite liking Norman’s tone, though she had not much to say to his arguments.
“Not wasted? Not in doing what any one can do? I know what you’ll say about the poor. I grant it, but high ability must be given for a purpose, not to be thrown away. It is common-sense, that some one must be meant to do the dirty work.”
“I see what you mean, Norman, but I don’t quite like that to be called by such a name. I think—” she hesitated. “Don’t you think you dislike such things more than—”
“Any one must abominate dirt and slovenliness. I know what you mean. My father thinks ‘tis all nonsense in me, but his profession has made him insensible to such things, and he fancies every one else is the same! Now, Margaret, am I unreasonable?”
“I am sure I don’t know, dear Norman,” said Margaret, hesitating, and feeling it her duty to say something; “I dare say it was very disagreeable.”
“And you think, too, that I made a disturbance for nothing?”
“No, indeed I don’t, nor does dear papa. I have no doubt he will see whether it is proper for Ethel. All I think he meant is, that perhaps your not being well last winter has made you a little more sensitive in such things.”
Norman paused, and coloured. He remembered the pain it had given him to find himself incapable of being of use to his father, and that he had resolved to conquer the weakness of nerve of which he was ashamed; but he did not like to connect this with his fastidious feelings of refinement. He would not own to himself that they were over nice, and, at the bottom of all this justification, rankled Richard’s saying, that he who cared for such things was unfit for a clergyman. Norman’s secret thought was, it was all very well for those who could only aspire to parish work in wretched cottages—people who could distinguish themselves were more useful at the university, forming minds, and opening new discoveries in learning.
Was Norman quite proof against the consciousness of daily excelling all his competitors? His superiority had become even more manifest this Easter, when Cheviot and Forder, the two elder boys whom he had outstripped, left the school, avowedly, because it was not worth while for them to stay, since they had so little chance of the Randall scholarship. Norman had now only to walk over the course, no one even approaching him but Harvey Anderson.