ing every force
for the coming struggle, and expressed at the same time the firm
conviction that, if John did his best, he ought to be the senior classic
in the year.

Even Mrs. Goddard urged him to go. Of course he asked her advice. He
would not have lost that opportunity of making her speak of himself, nor
of gauging the exact extent of the interest he hoped she felt in him.

It was two or three days after the long conversation he had enjoyed with
her. In that time they had met often and John's admiration for her,
strengthened by his own romantic desire to be really in love, had begun
to assume proportions which startled Mrs. Goddard and annoyed Mr. Juxon.
The latter felt that the boy was in his way; whenever he wanted to see
Mrs. Goddard, John was at her side, talking eagerly and contesting his
position against the squire with a fierceness which in an older and wiser
man would have been in the worst possible taste. Even as it was, Mr.
Juxon looked considerably annoyed as he stood by, smoothing his smooth
hair from time to time with his large white hand and feeling that even at
his age, and with his experience, a man might sometimes cut a poor
figure.

On the particular occasion when the relations between John and the squire
became an object of comment to Mrs. Ambrose, the whole party were
assembled at Mrs. Goddard's cottage. She had invited everybody to tea, a
meal which in her little household represented a compromise between her
appetite and Nellie's. She had felt that in the small festivities of the
Billingsfield Christmas season she was called upon to do her share with
the rest and, being a simple woman, she took her part simply, and did not
dignify the entertainment of her four friends by calling it a dinner. The
occasion was none the less hospitable, for she gave both time and thought
to her preparations. Especially she had considered the question of
precedence; it was doubtful, she thought, whether the squire or the vicar
should sit upon her right hand. The squire, as being lord of the manor,
represented the powers temporal, the vicar on the other hand represented
the church, which on ordinary occasions takes precedence of the lay
faculty. She had at last privately consulted Mr. Juxon, in whom she had
the greatest confidence, asking him frankly which she should do, and Mr.
Juxon had unhesitatingly yielded the post of honour to the vicar, adding
to enforce his opinion the very plausible argument that if he, t