as preparing for confirmation. He
wanted to make them feel that this was the first consciously serious step
in their lives; he tried to grope into the depths of their souls; he
wanted to instil in them his own vehement devotion. In Philip,
notwithstanding his shyness, he felt the possibility of a passion equal to
his own. The boy's temperament seemed to him essentially religious. One
day he broke off suddenly from the subject on which he had been talking.

"Have you thought at all what you're going to be when you grow up?" he
asked.

"My uncle wants me to be ordained," said Philip.

"And you?"

Philip looked away. He was ashamed to answer that he felt himself
unworthy.

"I don't know any life that's so full of happiness as ours. I wish I could
make you feel what a wonderful privilege it is. One can serve God in every
walk, but we stand nearer to Him. I don't want to influence you, but if
you made up your mind--oh, at once--you couldn't help feeling that joy and
relief which never desert one again."

Philip did not answer, but the headmaster read in his eyes that he
realised already something of what he tried to indicate.

"If you go on as you are now you'll find yourself head of the school one
of these days, and you ought to be pretty safe for a scholarship when you
leave. Have you got anything of your own?"

"My uncle says I shall have a hundred a year when I'm twenty-one."

"You'll be rich. I had nothing."

The headmaster hesitated a moment, and then, idly drawing lines with a
pencil on the blotting paper in front of him, went on.

"I'm afraid your choice of professions will be rather limited. You
naturally couldn't go in for anything that required physical activity."

Philip reddened to the roots of his hair, as he always did when any
reference was made to his club-foot. Mr. Perkins looked at him gravely.

"I wonder if you're not oversensitive about your misfortune. Has it ever
struck you to thank God for it?"

Philip looked up quickly. His lips tightened. He remembered how for
months, trusting in what they told him, he had implored God to heal him as
He had healed the Leper and made the Blind to see.

"As long as you accept it rebelliously it can only cause you shame. But if
you looked upon it as a cross that was given you to bear only because your
shoulders were strong enough to bear it, a sign of God's favour, then it
would be a source of happiness to you instead of misery."

He saw that the boy