‘Try to think, dear children,’ she added, ‘of some work that you may do in common for His sake. My cottage hospital has been a great delight to me. Your father, Ethel, built it for me in the first year of our married life, and I think he has cared for it so much because I cared for it, and he has been so good in helping the poor children when they were convalescent, and many of them who have been nursed there write to me now. I seem to have a little family scattered all over England and even beyond it, and I know it will be a happiness to you both to do some such work as this from the very first.’ One question that arose in those happy days at Helmsbury, and was discussed afterwards several times, was the question of Gerald’s profession. No one suggested that he should take Holy Orders. But he was now within sight of a fellowship, the crowning ornament of an academical career. When that had been gained (if it should be gained) it would be necessary for him to decide upon his profession. Lord Venniker, who possessed considerable political influence, was anxious that he should enter one of the Government offices, thinking that he was not qualified for public life, but that in such a sphere his conspicuous ability would bring him to the front. It was a line of life for which Gerald himself displayed some taste, though he had an inclination towards work in a university, or at least under the shadow of a great library. He reflected, however, that much of the best literary work in the world had been done by men who were not strictly students, but devoted to learning the fragments of leisure of which they had made better use than other men of a whole lifetime. Lady Venniker, though she often spoke of his profession, did not expressly state what she wished it to be; but it is probable that in her heart she cherished the hope (and Miss Venniker seems to have shared it) that he would yet see his way to entering upon the parochial ministry of the Church of England. To her it seemed that the profession of the clergyman, if it were conscientiously embraced, offered the blessing, which so few professions offer, of being in itself purely useful and beneficent; he who embraced it did not need to seek opportunities of doing good or to make them for himself apart from his professional life, but they came to him every day in the natural course of his duty; she thought no one could do so much good as a good clergyman, and once she quoted Coleridge’s description of the rural clergyman’s home as ‘the one idyll in English life.’ But Lady Venniker would never let the free choice of a profession, especially one so sacred as the clerical, be compromised or influenced by any deference to her own understood wish. Therefore Gerald was left to make his own choice.