But Mr. Eversley would not hear of opposition; so his wife was fain to pour out the tea, and with her own orthodox hands present it to Mr. Seaford, who gulped it down, though it was so hot as almost to choke him, feeling a little awkward at the unwonted familiarity. He did not fail to inform his family, when he went home, that he had been invited to take tea at the vicarage, but he paid a delicate compliment to Mrs. Seaford by protesting that the tea was ‘nothin’ like his own home-brewed.’ But the cup of tea was not the only privilege accorded to Mr. Seaford on that memorable evening; for Mr. Eversley bade Gerald run upstairs and bring down the prize which he had received as being head of his form, and Mr. Seaford, after inspecting it for some time with an air of enlightened admiration, returned it to its owner, observing that an intellect which yielded such a crop as that must have had ‘a pretty sight o’ manure.’ High farming and wide reading were parallel forms of cultivation in Mr. Seaford’s view. Who will doubt that Mr. Eversley, when he retired to his study that night, lifted up his voice in reverent thanksgiving to the Eternal? He read the story of Joseph and his meeting his father in Egypt; it seemed appropriate to the occasion in his own life. Tears of joy were in his eyes as he read it. When at last he went upstairs, he could not resist the satisfaction of peeping into Gerald’s room just to see that all was well with him; the boy was asleep, sleeping as peacefully as on the morning when Mr. Eversley had stood over him with the telegram announcing his election to a scholarship at St. Anselm’s; he stooped down and kissed him. Oh! happy, blessed self-forgetfulness of love! We live two lives, our own and our children’s, and it is often in our children’s lives that we live most truly. What success that could have happened to Mr. Eversley would have given him as much pleasure as his son’s? What preferment in Church or State would have been equal in value to that little volume that lay upon the drawing-room table with the arms of St. Anselm’s on its cover?