think me so duplex."

"Come, you understand how anxious I am about the boy."

"Exactly." And they both laughed.

"Is that all?" said Joanna Bowater.

"_Really and truly_ it is! Rose can manage him much better than I
can."

"He is very fond of her; but does he--is he--is his heart in his
work?" asked the sister, looking with her honest eyes earnestly at
Julius, her contemporary and playfellow as a child, and afterwards
the companion with whom she had worked out many a deep problem,
rendering mutual assistance that made each enter in no common degree
into the inner thoughts of the other.

Julius smiled. "I doubt whether he has come to his heart yet."

"Why should he be so young? Think what you were at twenty-three."

"I never had Herbert's physique; and that makes an immense
difference. I had no taste or capacity for what is a great
privation to a fine young fellow like him. Don't look startled! He
attempts nothing unfitting; he is too good and dutiful, but--"

"Yes, I know what that _but_ means."

"Nothing to be unhappy about. You know how blameless he has always
been at Eton and Oxford; and though he may view his work rather in a
school-boy aspect, and me as a taskmaster, as long as he is doing
right the growth is going on. Don't be unhappy, Jenny! His great
clear young voice is delightful to hear; he is capital at choral
practices, and is a hero to all the old women and boys, the more so
for the qualities that earnestness cannot give, but rather detracts
from."

"You mean that he is not in earnest?"

"Don't pervert all I say! He is not past the time of life when all
appointed work seems a task, and any sort of excuse a valid cause
against it; but he is conscientious, and always good-humoured under
a scolding,--and Rosamond does not spare him," he added, laughing.

"Then you don't think there has been a mistake about him?" said
Jenny, in a low voice of alarm.

"I have little doubt that when anything develops his inner life, so
as to overcome the great strong animal that demands play and
exercise, he will be a most useful clergyman."

"Perhaps he is too young, though I don't see how it could be helped.
Papa always intended it, because of the living; and Herbert never
wished anything else. I thought he really desired it, but now I
don't know whether he did not only take it as a matter of course."

"Obedience is no unwholesome motive. As things stood, to delay his
ordination would have be