“You are right, very right, Mrs. Curtis. The people about here are not much to speak of. We have to put up with it, for we can get no better. Retired people are mostly a set of nuisances; having done all the mischief they can in the world in their own persons, they revile everybody who is beginning, and put mischief into their heads.” “Yes, Dr. Eagles.” He was called Doctor by the common people about, and he did not like it. “Yes; there never was such a gossiping place, I’ve heard many people say. They have nothing to do themselves, and they pull everybody to pieces. I have never gone into it, but I can’t abide that sort of thing. They are so stuck up; don’t you think they are dreadfully stuck up? and what is there in them to make them better than their neighbours? Don’t you think so, Dr. Eagles? I do hate everything like that,” said Nancy, energetically. “I suppose you did not like to ask them to meet Arthur and me?” “I--I don’t ask anyone,” said Mr. Eagles, taken aback for the moment. “It is my wife that asks the people.” Then he began to realize that getting out of a difficulty by putting it upon his wife, was not a noble proceeding. “The fact is, I don’t think anyone was asked. We thought, I suppose, that you didn’t care for it. I don’t myself; I hope Curtis is not giving up work altogether. He may be tempted to do so, having no immediate object, but he ought never to interrupt his course of study. He was getting on very well with me.” “What should he go on with his studies for?” said Nancy; “he does not require it to make a living. He may please himself what he does. Oh, I shouldn’t like my husband to have to work! When a man is born a gentleman, Dr. Eagles--” “You have been good enough to bestow a degree upon me to which I have no right,” said Mr. Eagles. “I am simple Mr., like all the rest, though I am obliged to work for my living, and it would be of use to me. A man ought to work, however, when he’s young like Curtis. If he doesn’t now, he will miss it after. I’ve always told him so.” “I am sure I don’t think so at all,” said Nancy. “Why should he work? or anyone in the position of a gentleman? You know what I mean by a gentleman. Father is as good as Arthur, or anyone, and he has to work.” This mollified Mr. Eagles. “I hope we are all gentlemen,” he said, as lightly as was possible for him, “whether we work or not.” “Oh yes, in a kind of a way,” said Nancy, with careless scorn, “in your manners, and so forth. And clergymen, and teachers, and those sort of people are called so out of civility; but I never think anybody is a gentleman that has his own living to make.” “I think you are a little hard upon us, Mrs. Curtis,” said the Curate, with a smile.