him. The allowance will be discontinued next year."

"What! he is going to stop even that school-boy's pittance?"

"Why not, sir? I have no claim on him. And as he has not forgotten to
tell me so once or twice--"

"He was always a vulgar fellow," said Sir Lionel. "How he came to
have such a spirit of trade in his very blood, I can't conceive. God
knows I have none of it."

"Nor I either, sir."

"Well, I hope not. But does he expect you to live upon air? This is
bad news, George--very bad."

"Of course I have always intended to go into a profession. I have
never looked at it in the same light as you do. I have always
intended to make my own way, and have no doubt that I shall do so. I
have quite made up my mind about it now."

"About what, George?"

"I shall go into orders, and take a college living."

"Orders!" said Sir Lionel; and he expressed more surprise and almost
more disgust at this idea than at that other one respecting the
attorney scheme.

"Yes; I have been long doubting; but I think I have made up my mind."

"Do you mean that you wish to be a parson, and that after taking a
double-first?"

"I don't see what the double-first has to do with it, sir. The only
objection I have is the system of the establishment. I do not like
the established church."

"Then why go into it?" said Sir Lionel, not at all understanding the
nature of his son's objection.

"I love our liturgy, and I like the ritual; but what we want is the
voluntary principle. I do not like to put myself in a position which
I can, in fact, hold whether I do the duties of it or no. Nor do I
wish--"

"Well; I understand very little about all that; but, George, I
had hoped something better for you. Now, the army is a beggarly
profession unless a man has a private fortune; but, upon my word, I
look on the church as the worst of the two. A man _may_ be a bishop
of course; but I take it he has to eat a deal of dirt first."

"I don't mean to eat any dirt," said the son.

"Nor to be a bishop, perhaps," replied the father.

They were quite unable to understand each other on this subject. In
Sir Lionel's view of the matter, a profession was--a profession.
The word was understood well enough throughout the known world. It
signified a calling by which a gentleman, not born to the inheritance
of a gentleman's allowance of good things, might ingeniously obtain
the same by some exercise of his abilities. The more of these good
things that mig