bad?'
'What do you mean about Bernard?' said Felix, now thoroughly roused. 'Is it worse than you and Fulbert were in your gamin days?'
'I am afraid so,' said Lance. 'Ful took better care of himself than he seemed to do, and his friends were decent fellows, not like the lot that have hooked in poor little Bear.'
'I suppose it was some scrape of his that took you into Smoke-jack Alley. I thought you would get him out best without me.'
'The little dog, he was always after me when I didn't want him, but now I can't get at him. In short, there's nothing for it but cutting the connection between him and Jem Nares.'
'Just tell me how far it goes. What has he been doing with him?'
'Taking him to see rat-killing at Sims' in Smoke-jack Alley.'
'You couldn't hinder it?'
'No. Indeed, Felix, I did my best,' and the tears sprang into the boy's eyes; 'I did all but go after him, for I knew that would be worse than no good.'
'You need not apologise to me,' said Felix, laying down his pen; 'I have been very wrong. Between this business of Smith's and all the rest of it, I have hardly known which way to turn. I knew that I had not taken the right line with Fulbert, and interference made him worse, and I thought you had taken Bear in hand. Why, Lancey, I never meant to upset you. You have done all you could.'
'I did think I was good for that,' said Lance ruefully, 'after all our old swells at Minsterham said about influence on the choir and bosh. That when it comes to one's own brother-'
The tears were almost girl-like, and Felix's comfort was in the tone that suited them. 'Indeed, Lance, you may be doing him more good than you know. I thank you with all my heart; you are a much more real help and comfort to us all than you guess.'
'That's what you say to Cherry!' said Lance, impatiently. 'Now I can be real help, if you would only let me, and then Bernard could go out of the way of these fellows.'
'That he shall do, if I have to dip into the Chester legacy again.'
'Better take my way,' said Lance, reviving; 'a young man with good references only wants board and lodging.
'It is not possible, Lance. It would not be respectful to the Bishop or the Dean, who have strained a point to keep you. There-I hear Mr. Kenyon's voice in the shop. I must go.'
'Only one thing, Felix. Will you hear what Jack Harewood says to it?'
To this Felix readily assented. He was hurried and harassed nearly to the extent of his time and capacity; he could not pause to give full consideration to his young brother's project, and was glad that the ungracious task of silencing it should be imposed on one less immediately interested.
John Harewood was always at Wilmet's side after four o'clock. Before that time he sometimes went to his home; he often spent the afternoon with Geraldine, but he was not usually about the house in the morning. So Lance, in a fever of impatience, wandered till he hunted him down writing letters in the coffee-room at the Fortinbras Arms.
'Jack, I say, come and have a walk.'
'Pleasant weather!'
'You want to be watered, after all that parching in India. It isn't raining now, and such a jolly cool day!'
'Jollier for you than a finer day, mayhap,' said the good-natured soldier, who greatly commiserated Lance's enforced idleness, and only wondered at his not making it a greater misery to every one else. He also understood what the inured ears of the family never guessed, since Lance never complained, the distress of Theodore's constant hum and concertina to sensitive ears and excited nerves; and had observed that Lance had flagged ever since the journey to Minsterham, with less of vigour and more of sharpness. Sure that something was preying on the boy, he deferred his least important letters, to splash away with him in mud and mist, and hear him explain his views, with the fullness often more possible towards friend than family.
John was greatly surprised, but did not make any crushing objection, and listened with thorough sympathy. He doubted, however, whether Lance would be doing any real good, and not only throwing more, instead of less work upon Felix. Sensibly enough the boy went into the matter. He said that when Felix began, the staff had also consisted of Mr. Froggatt, Redstone, a lad called Stubbs, and a boy. Now Felix did much more than Mr. Froggatt had then done, and Stubbs was a useful piece of mechanism without a head, and Lance believed himself quite able to fill the place Felix had taken at the same age; indeed, he had far less either to learn or to overcome, and though his arithmetical powers were still in abeyance, he had rather excelled in that line at the Cathedral school.
'I know, of course,' said Lance, 'that a man from a London house would be of more use; but there's this awful salary, and he would never care to look after Felix.'
'I allow that; but even if you can be of much present use, is it not at the expense of greater usefulness by and by?'
'I am sick of that! Edgar and Clem both mean to be of use by and by, and what comes of it? Edgar has spent Felix's two hundred pounds that he borrowed, and now has got his own, all to repay when he is a great painter. And he is six years older than I am! Now if I earned my guinea a week, as Felix did, it would be real good now, and I should be learning the trade for the future.'
'That's the question. First, would the guinea a week make so much appreciable difference?'
'Is that all you know about it, Jack? First, I should be earning my keep, not eating my head off; and then Bernard might be sent safe off to school.'
'You don't mean to say that otherwise he could not?'
'It has been a terribly costly year. There's Edgar. Then Clem couldn't settle in at Cambridge for nothing, there's been Alda turned back on Felix's hands; there's been illness, and goodness knows what the doctors may charge; and there's Felix's outing and mine!'
John answered by opening his pocket-book and showing Dr. Manby's account receipted.
'O Jack! You don't mean-'
'Considering that Will was the sole cause of the doctor being wanted at all, we could only wish to bear the damages.'
'I hope you have told Wilmet. It would be a ton weight off her mind.'
'I hope she would think the Chapter did it; but if you think she is anxious, let her know that it is all right.'
'You are a brick, John! But Felix himself said it would be a close shave. I wish I could throttle that Bexley Tribune, and all its dirty supporters!'
'Do you know, Lance, I am very much struck with your brother's-ay, and old Froggatt's conduct in this matter.'
Lance flushed with pleasure. 'Go ahead, Jack!'
'Of course, for a paper to keep its politics is nothing; but to take up the cause of an unpopular man, whose slights have been marked-'
'Who has been a malicious little cad,' chimed in the chorister.
'To take up his cause simply as a matter of justice, and therewith of the Church, without truckling to public opinion, at absolute risk and loss, seems to me generosity and principle quite out of the common way.'
'You're about right there,' said Lance, intensely gratified; 'and doesn't it make one burn to help the old fellow?'
'Quite true. The question is, which way to help him; and while I grant you that the being idle at home just now is a terrible trial, whether it might not be better to be patient under it, than to disqualify yourself for a line in which you might do more-that is if it does disqualify you.'
'What line do you mean?' said Lance.
'Scholarship, the University.'
'That wasn't what I wanted most,' said Lance; 'and as for that, I'm disqualified enough by all this waste of time.'
'What was your wish, then?'
'I'll tell you,' said Lance, with lowered voice. 'When I used to lie catching notes of the chanting, and knowing that the organ was quiet for me, I used to feel that if I got well, I must give up my life to it, and study music in full earnest, so as to be a real lift to people's praise, perhaps in our own Cathedral. I thought maybe I could get in as a
