Gerald in all his early years could conceive no idea of a higher or more beneficent life than his father’s. It was his hope, his ambition, to follow in his father’s steps, though he looked forward to finding as much difficulty in keeping pace with those steps in after life as he now found in keeping pace with them in his parochial rounds. He was generally, almost invariably, his father’s companion in visiting his people. As a rule, when Mr. Eversley entered a cottage to bring solace to the distressed or exhortation to the erring, he would leave Gerald outside; but now and then--if the sickness was of a touching kind--Mr. Eversley would take him in, on the principle that it was not good for any Christian soul, however young, to live in ignorance of the dark or painful side of life. ‘I don’t want you, Gerald,’ he would say, ‘to think life is all sunshine; it is often dark, my dear boy, and full of sadness, but to the Christian conscience the shadows, no less than the sunshine, attest the presence of the Sun.’ Mr. Eversley’s manner of visiting his sick people was simple. He generally began with some reference to the sufferer’s health, or family, or worldly circumstances; he showed much kindness in inquiring about them; then he offered prayer, or, in the current phrase of the village, ‘engaged in prayer,’ kneeling reverently by the bedside; then he opened his well-worn Bible and read a Psalm--the 90th and the 103rd were, I know, his favourites--interspersing it with comments, or a passage of the Gospel, most frequently of St. John, and when he had done reading, and perhaps had given some slight pecuniary relief, if it were needed, he took his leave with a divine benediction, solemnly spoken. ‘Always end with the pure word of God’--that was his rule--‘it leaves a taste in the mouth, maybe a savour of life unto life.’