“How can you tell me such a fib?” said Mrs. Damerel, half crying, half laughing. “Oh, you are too good, too good; but, Mr. Nolan, I can’t take anything more from you. Rose must help me, it is her duty; it is bad for her to be left so much to herself; why, I was married and had all the troubles of life on my head at her age.” “And so she’ll have, before you know where you are,” said the good curate, which will show the reader at once that he entertained no absorbing passion for Miss Rose, though I am aware it is a curate’s duty so to do. “So she’ll have; she’ll be marrying some great grandee or other. She looks like a princess, and that’s what she’ll be.” “She has no right to be a princess,” said the mother, overwrought and irritable, “and duty is better than ease surely. You, I know, think so.” “For the like of me, yes,” said the curate; “for her, I don’t know.” “I was once very much like her, though you would not think it,” said the mother, with the slightest tinge of bitterness, “but that is not the question--no, no, we must not trouble you.” “When I tell you the mornings hang on my hands! I don’t know what to do with my mornings. There’s Tuesday I’m due at the schools, but the rest of the week I do nothing but idle. And idling’s a great temptation. A cigar comes natural when you’ve nothing to do. You don’t like a man smoking in the morning; I’ve heard you say so. So you see the young ones will save me from a--no, I won’t say cigar; worse than that; cigars are too dear for a curate, me dear lady--from a pipe.” “Mr. Nolan, you are too good for this world,” said poor Mrs. Damerel, affected to tears; “but I must first try what can be done at home,” she added after a pause; “no, no, you weigh me down under your kindness. What would the parish be but for you?” “It would be just the same if I were dead and buried,” said the curate, shrugging his shoulders. “Ah, that’s the worst of it: try for a little bit of a corner of work like a child’s lessons, and you may be of service; but try to mend the world, even a bit of a parish, and you’re nowhere. They don’t think half as much of me as they do of the rector?” he added, with a curious smile, which the rector’s wife only half understood. Was it satirical? or could it be possible that the curate was surprised that the people thought more of the rector than of himself? Mrs. Damerel was aware, no one better, of her husband’s faults. Many a time she was ready to say in bitterness (to herself) that he was wearing her to death; but nevertheless she looked at long, loosely-built, snub-nosed Mr. Nolan, with mingled amusement and surprise. Was it possible that he could entertain any hopes of rivalling her husband? Of course a visit from the rector was an honor to any one, for Mr. Damerel was a man who, notwithstanding a little human weakness, was the very picture and model of a gentleman; and the idea of comparing him with good Mr. Nolan was too absurd.