"'No plan? No aim?'
"'I thought they'd know.'
"'Whatever they give you—eh? A promiscuous appetite. And while you—while you Arr indulge in this mixed feast of learning, this futile rivalry with the children of the leisured classes, somebody I suppose will have to keep you. Don't you think it's a bit hard on that kind mother of yours who toils day and night for you, that you shouldn't work and do your bit, eh? One of the things, Mortimer, we used to learn in our much-maligned public schools, was something we called playing cricket. Well, I ask you, is this—this disinclination to do a bit of the earning, Arr, is it playing cricket? I could expect such behaviour from an 'Arry, you know, but not from a Mortimer. Noblesse oblige. You think it over, my boy. There's such a thing as learning, but there's such a thing as Duty. Many of us have to be content with lives of unassuming labour. Many of us. Men who under happier circumstances might have done great things....'
"The Moggeridges were gently persuasive in the same strain. My mother had put her case to them also. Usually I was indisposed to linger in the Moggeridge atmosphere; they had old-fashioned ideas about draughts, and there was a peculiar aged flavour about them; they were, to be plain, a very dirty old couple indeed. With declining strength they had relaxed by imperceptible degrees from the not very exacting standards of their youth. I used to cut into their room and out of it again as quickly as I could.
"But half a century of the clerical life among yielding country folk had given these bent, decaying, pitiful creatures a wonderful way with their social inferiors. 'Morning, Sir and Mam,' I said, and put down the coals I had brought and took up the empty scuttle-lining I had replaced.
"Mrs. Moggeridge advanced shakily so as to intercept my retreat. She had silvery hair, a wrinkled face and screwed-up red-rimmed eyes; she was short-sighted and came peering up very close to me whenever she spoke to me, breathing in my face. She held out a quivering hand to arrest me; she spoke with a quavering voice. 'And how's Master Morty this morning?' she said, with kindly condescending intonations.
"'Very well thank you, Mam,' I said.
"'I've been hearing rather a sad account of you, Morty, rather a sad account.'
"'Sorry, Mum,' I said, and wished I had the courage to tell her that my life was no business of hers.
"They say you're discontented, Morty. They say you complain of God's Mercies.'