The scene that might have been seen inside the Rector’s window at that moment was this: a tall youth seated on a chair presenting nothing more responsive than the crown of his head, supported on his hands, to his father’s remarks, and saying never a word; while the Rector, who had risen from his own seat at his writing-table in his impatience, stood pouring out the vials of his wrath. He was putting before Jim all the enormities of which he had been guilty--his debts, the expense he had been to his parents, the disappointment, the disgrace. When, however, Mr. Plowden held up his hands to heaven and earth in grief and disappointment that it should be ‘_my_ son’ who had been sent down by his college, it is to be feared that Jim was making angry comments in his mind to the effect that all his father cared for was that--‘not me, or anything about me.’ He knew the circumstances very well--far better than his father could tell him; and was it likely his conscience would be more tender for being dragged over the same ground again and again? When the Rector cried, ‘What is the use of talking to an impenitent cub like you?’ his son felt deeply inclined to reply, ‘There is none.’ He had, indeed, been wound up to the pitch of saying, ‘Why do you go on like that when you’re so sure it will make no difference?’--a profoundly sensible utterance, but one, perhaps, which it does still less good to say. When ‘Dash, Dash! come here, old fellow--get ready to come out for a walk,’ sounded into the study, that home of anything but retired leisure, the Rector came to a sudden stop. ‘There’s some confounded visitor or other,’ he said in vexation, but not without relief. ‘It isn’t a visitor, it’s Mab.’ ‘Don’t contradict me, sir! Who is she but a visitor, a silly girl breaking in where your mother herself---- Don’t think I’ve done with you because I’m interrupted. Don’t let me see you stir from your book till dinner. Try whether you can’t do something like your simple duty, for once in a way, just for the variety of the thing! Eh!--yes, my dear, you can come in if you really want to, if you have anything to say to me, but you know I’m always busy.’ ‘Open the window, please, uncle,’ said Mab. ‘Is Jim there? We want him to come out with us, out on the river. The weeds are coming up already in the backwater, and we don’t want to risk going over the weir. It would be a wetting, and it might be a drowning, don’t you know: and we want Jim.’ The weeds and the weir were the invention of the moment, and Mab felt rather proud of her skill; for of course the most obstinate of backwaters is not choked with weeds in March, and the girls, who were used to the river, were not so foolish at that season as to approach the weir. The Rector looked out upon his niece, of whom he was proud, with a look of helplessness; for even from his sister he had kept the secret (knowing nothing of Florry’s indiscretions) of the sad state of affairs with Jim.