e to
make it worth his while to hunt for any more. As for Saint Peter's,
they all say it is an ideal parish: a rich church in a college town,
with a large salary and not too much work. In fact," Catia added
wisely; "they all say that there never does need to be too much work in
a parish where a good share of the congregation are very young, and
transients."

Brenton lifted his head. Then he lifted his brows, fine, narrow brows
and arching.

"It strikes me that there might be all the more," he said.

Catia's fingers beat a tattoo on the table.

"You're just for all the world like your mother, Scott," she said, with
renewed impatience.

"I hope so," Brenton assented gravely, for Mrs. Brenton had died, a
year before, and her memory still was sacred in the mind of her son.

Not even Catia, in her present mood, dared introduce a jarring note,
until a little interval had followed upon Scott's grave reply. She,
too, had cared for Mrs. Brenton; at least, she had cared as much as it
was in her to care for any one. She, too, had mourned sincerely, when
the patient, unselfish, plodding life went out. Indeed, there had
seemed to be no little cruelty in the fate which had ordained that Mrs.
Brenton, after giving her life and strength and all her prayers to the
equipment of her son in his profession, should not have been allowed a
little longer time to take pleasure in the things her tireless effort
had accomplished. For, though Scott had done his best to help himself,
the real strain had rested on his mother, the more real in that it had
been unbroken by the variety of his student existence, unrewarded by
the elating consciousness of personal achievement which had come to him
at the end of every stage of his development.

In all truth, it had been upon Mrs. Brenton that the burden had fallen
most heavily. She had accomplished the almost impossible achievement;
yet to her had been denied the fullest fruition of her dreams. Scott
was a clergyman at last, a preacher, it was said, of more than ordinary
promise; but the gospel that he was going forth to preach to all men
was not a gospel accredited by any of the ancestral Parson Wheelers.
Therefore it was that, after all her struggle, poor Mrs. Brenton died,
a disappointed woman. Therefore it was that, by the very reason of the
sincerity of his own decisions, Scott, her son, realized her
disappointment, and cherished her memory the more tenderly on that
account. Vaguely, but res