“I have it now at all events. But of that everyone has enough who lives his life. Those who gain no experience are those who shirk the king’s highway, for fear of encountering the Duty seated by the roadside.”
“You ought to be a clergyman yourself, sir,” said Wingfold, humbly. “How is it that such as I——”
Here he checked himself, knowing something of how it was.
“I hope I ought to be just what I am, neither more nor less,” replied Polwarth. “As to being a clergyman, Moses had a better idea about such things, at least so far as concerns outsides, than you seem to have, Mr. Wingfold. He would never have let a man who in size and shape is a mere mockery of the human, stand up to minister to the congregation. But if you will let me help you, I shall be most grateful; for of late I have been oppressed with the thought that I serve no one but myself and my niece. I am in mortal fear of growing selfish under the weight of my privileges.”
A fit of asthmatic coughing seized him, and grew in severity until he seemed struggling for his life. It was at the worst when his niece entered, but she showed no alarm, only concern, and did nothing but go up to him and lay her hand on his back between his shoulders till the fit was over. The instant the convulsion ceased, its pain dissolved in a smile.
Wingfold uttered some lame expressions of regret that he should suffer so much.
“It is really nothing to distress you, or me either, Mr. Wingfold,” said the little man. “Shall we have a cup of tea, and then resume our talk?”
“The fact, I find, Mr. Polwarth,” said the curate, giving the result of what had been passing through his mind, and too absorbed in that to reply to the invitation, “is, that I must not, and indeed cannot give you half-confidences. I will tell you all that troubles me, for it is plain that you know something of which I am ignorant,—something which, I have great hopes, will turn out to be the very thing I need to know. May I speak? Will you let me talk about myself?”
“I am entirely at your service, Mr. Wingfold,” returned Polwarth, and seeing the curate did not touch his tea, placed his own cup again on the table.
The young woman got down like a child from the chair upon which she had perched herself at the table, and with a kind look at Wingfold, was about to leave the room.