This reminded Cecil of his father's sermon, which indeed Mr. Yorke had in his mind when he spoke. He was silent a good while, then he began on what seemed at first another subject. 'If something that wasn't your own fault had come to hinder you when you were being educated for a clergyman, shouldn't you have thought you weren't meant to be one?' 'I think it would have depended on what the hindrance was, and a good many other circumstances. It isn't only book-learning that makes people fit to be clergymen; perhaps I might have been hindered in that, only to make me more fit in some other way.' 'What kind of way?' 'Well, I might have needed to learn submission or humility, or a hundred things.' Cecil clasped both hands round his knees, and went swaying himself backwards and forwards in a queer kind of way that was more reflective than polite. 'I suppose it wouldn't do for a clergyman to be cock-a-hoop,' he said presently. 'Well, not exactly, if he meant to be in any sense an example to his flock,' returned Mr. Yorke with a smile. 'I know I was very cock-a-hoop just before this disappointment came,' thought Cecil, 'and that last week I was careless and all. I wonder whether that is why all this has happened!' He did not say any of this aloud, but it was not pride that kept him from the avowal, only a very natural and reasonable shyness of talking about himself. He stopped rocking, and sat with his gaze fixed on the trees in the distance, without really seeing them a bit. A new feeling of half-dismayed contrition was springing up in his heart, but the bitterness of resentment and the sense of injury were passing away. He started when the church bells began to ring. There was evening prayer, with catechizing, at three o'clock at Wilbourne Church, and evening prayer again, with a sermon, at seven. 'Are you going, sir?' he said as Mr. Yorke rose up. 'Not to church now, but I must be off to Bar-end, where I have my class of hobbledehoys from the farms.' 'Do you think father will expect me at the catechizing?' 'I should think he would be glad to see you there.' 'I mustn't stand with the choir, I suppose,' said Cecil, hesitating. 'No; but I think, if I were you, I should be all the more anxious to go. You're not sulking, I can see, Cecil; so why should you let any one think you are?' 'I have been, though,' said Cecil rather awkwardly, breaking through his shyness now that truth seemed to require it. 'Well, Sunday is a good day for turning over a new leaf,' said Mr. Yorke, with a smile in his eyes that seemed to make no doubt at all of Cecil's willingness to do it. 'It seemed so hard at first,' he answered, feeling as if he must excuse himself a little. 'Yes, it _is_ a struggle sometimes to accept one's position; but when once one has, all the bitterness goes, and one finds oneself not half so miserable as one expected.'