give you L150, to be paid in quarterly instalments of L37
10_s_, as from the 21st of this month for one year. Furthermore,
at the end of next year if you find that poetry is less profitable
than even you expect, I will offer you a place at Fox Hall,
thereby securing for you the certainty of a life moderately free
from financial worries. After all, even a schoolmaster has some
spare time, and I dare say our greatest poets did much of their
best work in their spare time. The idea of writing poetry all day
and every day appeals to me as enervating and ostentatious.

Your affectionate father,
JOHN HAZLEWOOD.

Guy stood still when he had finished the letter, and execrated mutely
the damnable dependence that compelled him to accept gratefully and
humbly this gift of L150. Yet with no money of his own coming in till
December, with actually a housekeeper on her way from Cardiff and his
house already furnished, he must accept the offer. In a year's time he
would have proved the reasonableness of his request; and he began to
compose a scene between them, in which his father would almost on bended
knees beg him to accept an allowance of L300 a year in consideration of
the magnificent proof he had afforded to the world of being in the
direct line of English poets.

"And I mustn't forget to send him a sonnet on his birthday," said Guy to
himself.

This notion restored his dignity, and he hurried on to overtake the trap
which was waiting on the brow of the hill.

"You were saying something about women being right," he reminded Mr.
Godbold, as he sat down again beside him. "Has it ever struck you that
fathers are nearly always wrong?"

"That wouldn't do for me at all," said Mr. Godbold, shaking his head.
"You see I'm the father of nine, and if I wasn't always right, sir, I
shouldn't be no better than a bull in a china-shop where I live. I've
_got_ to be right, Mr. Hazlewood."

"I suppose that's what the Pope felt," Guy murmured.

"Now do you reckon this here Pope they speak of really exists in a
manner of speaking?" Mr. Godbold asked, as the trap bowled along the
level stretch of upland road. "You know there's some of these
narrow-minded mortals at Wychford as will have it that Mr. Grey, our
parson, is in with the Pope, and I said to one or two of them the other
night while we were arguing in the post-office, I said, 'Have any of you
wise men of Gotham ever seen this Pope as you're