“If there is one man on earth whom I envy it is Bertie Nugent,” said Maurice, when Clara had ended her nursery story. “I remember him well enough, and I know the interest Mrs. Crofton takes in him. You need not make faces at me, Clara--I don’t think he’s very brilliant, and neither, I daresay, does Mrs. Crofton; but he’s in his proper place.” “Maurice, my dear, the place Providence appoints to us is always our proper place,” said Mrs. Harley, with the true professional spirit of a clergyman’s wife. “Oh! just so, mother,” said the Fellow of Exeter, with a momentary return of his old, superb, superior smile, “only, you know, one differs in opinion with Providence now and then. Bertie Nugent, however, has no doubt about it, I am certain. I envy him,” added the young man, with a certain glance at me, as if he expected me to appreciate the change in his sentiments, and to feel rather complimented that my poor Bertie was promoted to the envy of so exalted a personage. “I thought Mr. Maurice Harley despised soldiers,” said Miss Reredos, dropping her words slowly out of her mouth, as if with a pleasant consciousness that they contained a sting. “On the contrary, I think soldiering the only natural profession to which we are born,” said Maurice, starting with an angry flush, and all but rudeness of tone. “Don’t say so, please, before the children,” cried Clara. “War’s disgusting. For one thing, nobody can talk of anything else when it’s going on. And then only think what shoals of poor men it carries away, never to bring them back again. Ah, poor Bertie!” cried Clara, with a little feeling, “I wish the war were over, and he was safe home.” “I am not sure that war is not the most wholesome of standing institutions,” said Maurice, philosophically. “Your shoals of poor men who go away, and never return, don’t matter much to general humanity. There were more went off in the Irish exodus than we shall lose in India. We can afford to lose a little blood.” “Oh, yes, and sometimes it takes troublesome people out of the way,” said the Rector’s sister--“one should not forget that.” “Extremely true, and very philosophical, for a woman,” said Maurice, with a savage look. “It drains the surplus population off, and makes room for those who remain.”