Realizing that the work was likely to equal that of Gibbon both in length and the years necessary to its completion; also that from it could be expected no immediate pecuniary profits, Mr. Knight looked round to find some other way of occupying his leisure, and adding to his income. Although a reserved person, on a certain Sunday when he went to lunch at the Hall, in the absence of Mr. Blake who was spending the week-end somewhere else, he confided his difficulties to Lady Jane whom he felt to be sympathetic. “The house is so big,” he complained. “Mrs. Parsons” (Godfrey’s old nurse and his housekeeper) “and one girl cannot even keep it clean. It was most foolish of my predecessor in the living to restore that old refectory and all the southern dormitories upon which I am told he spent no less than £1,500 of his own money, never reflecting on the expense which his successors must incur merely to keep them in order, since being once there they are liable for charges for dilapidations. It would have been better, after permission obtained, to let them go to ruin.” “No doubt, but they are very beautiful, are they not?” remarked Lady Jane feebly. “Beauty is a luxury and, I may add, a snare. It is a mistaken love of beauty and pomp, baits that the Evil One well knows how to use, which have led so large a section of our Church astray,” he replied sipping at his tumbler of water. A silence followed, for Lady Jane, who from early and tender associations loved high-church practices, did not know what to answer. It was broken by Isobel who had been listening to the conversation in her acute way, and now said in her clear, strong voice: “Why don’t you keep a school, Mr. Knight? There’s lots of room for it in the Abbey.” “A school!” he said. “A school! I never thought of that. No, it is ridiculous. Still, pupils perhaps. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, &c. Well, it is time for me to be going. I will think the matter over after church.” Mr. Knight did think the matter over and after consultation with his housekeeper, Mrs. Parsons, an advertisement appeared in _The Times_ and _The Spectator_ inviting parents and guardians to entrust two or three lads to the advertiser’s care to receive preliminary education, together with his own son. It proved fruitful, and after an exchange of the “highest references,” two little boys appeared at Monk’s Acre, both of them rather delicate in health. This was shortly before the crisis arose as to the future teaching of Isobel, when the last governess, wishing her “a better spirit,” had bidden her a frigid farewell and shaken the dust of Hawk’s Hall off her feet.