The declining sun shone full on Mr. Henry, as he sat at the window of his room. He had taken possession of it some days now, and things were settling down into ordinary routine. James Talbot was nearly well again, and the commotion had subsided; but the affair remained in the same doubt, none of the boys had confessed, and suspicion was partially diverting itself from them. This room of Mr. Henry's faced the college and playground, and he liked to draw his table to the window. He was dotting down on a piece of paper his probable expenses; was calculating how little it would be possible for him to live upon, and how much save out of his hundred and twenty pounds a year salary. He had applied to a house in Paternoster Row for some translation to do: his idea had been to get private teaching in his free hours, but he found Orville Green too small a place to admit of the probability of much. The answer from the Paternoster Row house had just come in: they would give him the translation of a scientific German work; but the terms offered with it were very poor indeed. He intended to accept them; he said to himself that he had no other resource but to accept them, and they were being put down in his pencilled calculation.
Lodgings, food, laundress, clothes, and sundries. The lodging and laundress must be paid, the sundries must be found, those hundred and one trifles that arise one knows not how; in the clothes he could not stint himself, for he must appear as a gentleman: indeed, it would have been against Mr. Henry's natural instincts not to do so. But the food!—ah! he could deny himself there as much as he pleased; and the "much" seemed to be unlimited. To a young man these self-denials in prospective seem so easy.
He laid down his pencil, and leaned his head upon his hand. In his face, as he looked upwards; in his sad dark eyes fixed on the blue of the sky, but seeing it not, there was an expression that seemed to speak of utter friendlessness. A great care was upon him that evening; care of one sort was always upon him, but a different one had suddenly arisen to make itself heard. Was his health giving way? Doubts of it had occurred now and again in the past few weeks and been driven away without much notice; but since crossing over to England, his strength was as a mere reed. What if the capability to work were taken from him? Certain words came into his mind,—"Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?" Was he destined to be one of these useless trees, bearing no fruit? doing no good in his generation? The hot tears came into his eyes, and he breathed a silent word to One who was seated beyond that bright blue sky.
George Paradyne dashed in. "I say, Mr. Henry," began he, without preliminary ceremony of any description, "I shan't like this Orville College."
"Why not?" asked Mr. Henry, putting his paper into a drawer, and his pencil into his pocket.
"There's something up against me. The fellows won't let me join in their play."
"Oh, nonsense, George."
"But it isn't nonsense. They were at a fault just now for one to make up a game—it's that noisy one, you know, that takes eighteen fellows, nine on a side, and they had only seventeen. 'Oh, here comes another,' I heard some one say as I ran up; but when they saw it was me, there was a sudden silence, and every one of the lot turned away."
"I should say, 'When they saw it was I,' George," observed Mr. Henry, not really to correct his grammar, but to divert his thoughts from the subject.
"Oh, bother," answered George, his large, bright, grey eyes laughing. "But, I say, I wonder what can be the reason?"