“Humph,” said Sir Thomas, “I know better; I know how Campbell, there, looked the other day when he came out of church. I know the Scotch and their ways of thinking. Go and make the tea, and don’t talk of what you don’t understand. But, as for you, Campbell, if you have a mind for the University and to go in for the Church--” But this was more than Colin, being twenty, and a Scotchman, could bear. “I _am_ going in for the Church,” said the lad, doing all he could to keep down the excitement at which Sir Thomas would have laughed, “but it did not in the least touch my heart the other day to know that it was the twentieth Sunday after Trinity. Devotion is a great matter,” said the young Scotchman, “I grant you have the advantage over us there; but it would not do in Scotland to preach about the Church’s goodness, and what she had appointed for such or such a day. We preach very stupid sermons, I dare say; but at least we mean to teach somebody something--what God looks for at their hands, or what they may look for at His. It is more an occupation for a man,” cried the young revolutionary, “than reading the sublimest of prayers. I am going in for the Church--but it is the Church of Scotland,” said Colin. He drew himself up with a grand youthful dignity, which was much lost on Sir Thomas, who, for his part, looked at his new tutor with eyes of sober wonderment, and did not understand what this emotion meant. “There is no occasion for excitement,” said the baronet; “nobody now-a-days meddles with a man’s convictions; indeed, Harry would say, it’s a great thing to have any convictions. That is how the young men talk now-a-days,” said Sir Thomas; and he moved off the sofa again, and yawned, though not uncivilly. As for Miss Matty, she came stealing up when she had made the tea, with her cup in her hand. “So you do mean to be a minister?” she said, in a half whisper, with a deprecating look. Lady Frankland had roused up, like her husband, and the two were talking, and did not take any notice of Matty’s proceedings with the harmless tutor. The young lady was quite free to play with her mouse a little, and entered upon the amusement with zest, as was natural. “You mean to shut yourself up in a square house, with five windows in front, like the poor gentleman who has such red hair; and never see anybody but the old women in the parish, and have your life made miserable every Sunday by _that_ precentor--” “I hope I have a soul above precentors,” said Colin, with a little laugh, which was unsteady still, however, with excitement; “and one might mend all that,” he added a minute after, looking at her with a kind of wistful inquiry which he could not have put into words. What was it he meant to ask with his anxious eye? But he did not himself know.