“Let me introduce you. Mr Yelverton, our new curate—my son Clifton.”
“Why, Jack!” I cried, wringing his hand, “and it’s actually you—a clergyman!” And I gazed at his clerical garb in blank amazement.
“Yes, it’s me,” he answered cheerily. “I certainly didn’t think that I should ever get an appointment in your country.”
“But how is it?” I cried, after I had explained to my mother how we had been chums at Wadham.
“I never thought you’d go in for the Church.”
“Nor did I,” he admitted, laughing. “But I’m curate of Duddington, and this is my first visit to your mother. I had no idea that this was your home. There are many Cleeves, you know.”
He was a merry, easy-going fellow, this old college companion of mine, a veritable giant in stature, fair, with a long, drooping moustache that a cavalry officer might have envied, broad shouldered, burly, a magnificent type of an Englishman. As he stood there towering above me, he looked strangely out of place in his long, black coat and clerical collar. An officer’s uniform would have suited him better.
I had left Oxford a couple of terms before he had, and on going abroad lost sight of him. He had been accredited by all as a coming man on account of his depth of learning. When I had last seen him, some six years before, he was living in Lincoln’s Inn, and reading for the Bar.
I referred to that occasion when we had met in the Strand, and he replied—
“Yes, but I preferred the Church. My uncle, you know, is Bishop of Galway.”