“Stay here!” said Mr. St. John, smiling again. “No, Mab, I am not fallen so low as that, I hope. There is no need of a curate at Brentburn. If I could do without one, at double his age, what should he want with a curate? It is pity, pity! Oh yes, my dear, I know very creditable to him; but I did not expect—I never expected to be exposed. Cicely, have you that letter about the curacy in Liverpool? I should like to look at it again.”
“But, papa, we agreed that it would not do; a bad town district full of dreadful people——”
“The more dreadful people are, the more they want to be looked after,” he said. “Write and inquire about it, my dear; I am not particular. Work! that is all I want, not idleness and charity. You all know I am old—but you don’t know how much strength I have in me, nor how I like work!” he cried, with a quiver in his voice.
The shock had something of the same effect upon him now that it had previously had on Cicely. The latent pride in him rose up in arms. She had to write by that post about the Liverpool curacy; and before the week was out he had accepted this strange, uncongenial post. He was to be one of three curates in a large parish, including some of the most wretched quarters in the town; the work very hard; the people very degraded.
“Papa, you will never be able to bear it,” cried Cicely, with tears in her eyes.
“Nonsense, nonsense,” he cried, with feverish energy; “write at once and say I accept. It will do me all the good in the world.”
CHAPTER XVII.
THE BREAKING UP.
THE day after Mr. St. John made this abrupt decision—almost the only decision he had made for himself, without stimulation from others, all his life—he went out into the parish as usual, but came home very tired, and went to bed early, which the girls thought natural enough. During the day Cicely had told Mab of her letter from Mildmay, and had written an answer to it, thanking him for his consideration, and informing him of the step her father had taken. “We shall never forget how kind you have been,” she wrote, gratefully; “both Mab and I feel it to the bottom of our hearts. Is that too much?” she said, reading it over. “I don’t want to say too much.”
“But we must not say too little; and if a man who is willing to sacrifice the half of his income is not to be thanked for it, I don’t know who is,” cried Mab, always practical.
“It is not so much the income,” Cicely said, slightly wounded by this matter-of-fact suggestion; “it is the feeling.”