"No, thank you," he said; "I cannot dine with you to-night; I must go home and write letters. Good-night, Nelly dear." He went his way through the leafless lanes, past the cottages and gardens, to the old sexton's ivy-covered dwelling. Then he lifted the latch and went straight to the little parlour that had been given up to his use. It was a very small room, so low that the beam across the ceiling was blackened and blistered by the heat from the curate's reading lamp. Six rush-bottomed chairs stood with their backs against the wall, and a carpet-covered hassock was the sole pretension to luxury that the apartment contained. But a cheerful fire was blazing in the grate, and on a little red tray stood a homely black teapot. "I saw you a-comin' through the lane, sir, and I've boiled an egg for you," said his good landlady, bustling in. "It's bitter cold still. My good man hopes you'll keep your fire up." She went back to her own quarters with a troubled look on her kindly old face. Somehow, her lodger did not seem quite so bright as he ought to have been after taking a walk with his sweetheart. She thought they must have had a lovers' quarrel; and, woman-like, was disposed to lay the blame thereof on her own sex. "All girls is fond of worritin' men; high or low, rich or poor, they're all alike," she said, to her husband. "They don't like going on too peaceable. Nothin' pleases 'em so well as a bit of a tiff now and then. But if Miss Channell don't know when she's well off, she's a foolish body;--women are a'most as bad as the children of Israel, a-quarrelling with their blessings!" While the sexton's wife was misjudging poor unconscious Nelly, the curate sat lingering over his tea-cup. He was thoroughly realizing, for the first time, that he had made a mistake in asking Miss Channell to be his wife. It was a little thing that had opened his eyes to the blunder,--merely her way of reading the little poem in the _Monthly Guest_. He had been always vaguely hoping that something would bring them nearer together, and make it possible for him to give all that he ought to give; and he had thought that the poem would do it. The verses seemed to have proceeded straight from some human heart, whose feelings and aspirations were identical with his own. They expressed the same sense of failure and hope which every earnest worker for God must feel. They described the peace which always grows out of hearty effort, even if that effort be not a success. Just one word or look of comprehension would have led him on to speak out of his interior self. But poor Nelly saw nothing in the poem beyond its rhymes. She was like one who misses the diamond in gazing at its setting. "Thank God!" he said, half aloud, "that I can hide my sense of disappointment from her! She shall never know that I want anything but her sweetness and goodness, poor child! What a happy man I ought to be, and yet what an ungrateful wretch I seem in my own eyes!"