more brought him in front of
Mrs. Wagstaff's, where Mr. Tryan lodged. He had often been here before,
so that the contrast between this ugly square brick house, with its
shabby bit of grass-plot, stared at all round by cottage windows, and his
own pretty white home, set in a paradise of orchard and garden and
pasture was not new to him; but he felt it with fresh force today, as he
slowly fastened his roan by the bridle to the wooden paling, and knocked
at the door. Mr. Tryan was at home, and sent to request that Mr. Jerome
would walk up into his study, as the fire was out in the parlour below.

At the mention of a clergyman's study, perhaps, your too active
imagination conjures up a perfect snuggery, where the general air of
comfort is rescued from a secular character by strong ecclesiastical
suggestions in the shape of the furniture, the pattern of the carpet, and
the prints on the wall; where, if a nap is taken, it is an easy-chair
with a Gothic back, and the very feet rest on a warm and velvety
simulation of church windows; where the pure art of rigorous English
Protestantism smiles above the mantelpiece in the portrait of an eminent
bishop, or a refined Anglican taste is indicated by a German print from
Overbeck; where the walls are lined with choice divinity in sombre
binding, and the light is softened by a screen of boughs with a grey
church in the background.

But I must beg you to dismiss all such scenic prettiness, suitable as
they may be to a clergyman's character and complexion; for I have to
confess that Mr. Tryan's study was a very ugly little room indeed, with
an ugly slapdash pattern on the walls, an ugly carpet on the floor, and
an ugly view of cottage roofs and cabbage-gardens from the window. His
own person his writing-table, and his book-case, were the only objects in
the room that had the slightest air of refinement; and the sole provision
for comfort was a clumsy straight-backed arm-chair covered with faded
chintz. The man who could live in such a room, unconstrained by poverty,
must either have his vision fed from within by an intense passion, or he
must have chosen that least attractive form of self-mortification which
wears no haircloth and has no meagre days, but accepts the vulgar, the
commonplace, and the ugly, whenever the highest duty seems to lie among
them.

'Mr. Tryan, I hope you'll excuse me disturbin' on you,' said Mr. Jerome.
'But I'd summat partickler to say.'

'You don't disturb m