“Help you to what?”
“To a living.”
“And, bless my heart and mind, how long do you suppose you might have to wait? A dozen years. Twenty years, for all you know. The curate who was here before you, poor Bell, had been waiting more than twenty years for one. It came to him last year, and he was forty-seven years old.”
Mr. Leafchild could say nothing to this.
“And a fine living it is, now he has it!” went on Sir John. “No, no, sir: Helen Whitney cannot be dragged into that kind of fate.”
“I should be the last to drag her, or wish to drag her into it. Believe that, Sir John. But, if I had a good living given to me, then I should like her to share it. And I think that my father would perhaps allow me some private means also, for Helen’s sake. He has money, and could do it.”
“But all those fancies and notions are just so many vapours, clouds up in the sky, and no better, don’t you see! You young men are sanguine and foolish; you lose sight of facts in fallacies. We must look at what is, not at what might be. Why, you are not yet even a priest!”
“No. I shall be ordained to that in a few months’ time.”
“And then, I suppose, you will either remain here, or get a curacy elsewhere. And your income will be that of a curate—a hundred pounds a-year, all told. Some curates get but fifty.”
“True. We are poorly paid.”