The curate, then, pondering over what Mr. Jones had told him, had an idea; and now he and his wife were speedily of one mind as to attempting an arrangement for Juliet with Miss Drake. What she would be able to pay would, they thought, ease them a little, while she would have the advantage of a better protection than a lodging with more humble people would afford her. Juliet was willing for any thing they thought best. Wingfold therefore called on the minister, to make the proposal to him, and was shown up to his study--a mere box, where there was just room for a chair on each side of the little writing-table. The walls from top to bottom were entirely hidden with books. Mr. Drake received him with a touching mixture of sadness and cordiality, and heard in silence what he had to say. "It is very kind of you to think of us, Mr. Wingfold," he replied, after a moment's pause. "But I fear the thing is impossible. Indeed, it is out of the question. Circumstances are changed with us. Things are not as they once were." There had always been a certain negative virtue in Mr. Drake, which only his friends were able to see, and only the wisest of them to set over against his display--this, namely, that he never attempted to gain credit for what he knew he had not. As he was not above show, I can not say he was safely above false show, for he who is capable of the one is still in danger of the other; but he was altogether above deception: that he scorned. If, in his time of plenty he liked men to be aware of his worldly facilities, he now, in the time of his poverty, preferred that men should be aware of the bonds in which he lived. His nature was simple, and loved to let in the daylight. Concealment was altogether alien to him. From morning to night anxious, he could not bear to be supposed of easy heart. Some men think poverty such a shame that they would rather be judged absolutely mean than confess it. Mr. Drake's openness may have sprung from too great a desire for sympathy; or from a diseased honesty--I can not tell; I will freely allow that if his faith had been as a grain of mustard seed, he would not have been so haunted with a sense of his poverty, as to be morbidly anxious to confess it. He would have known that his affairs were in high charge: and that, in the full flow of the fountain of prosperity, as well as in the scanty, gravelly driblets from the hard-wrought pump of poverty, the supply came all the same from under the throne of God, and he would not have _felt_ poor. A man ought never to feel rich for riches, nor poor for poverty. The perfect man must always feel rich, because God is rich. "The fact is," Mr. Drake went on, "we are very poor--absolutely poor, Mr. Wingfold--so poor that I may not even refuse the trifling annuity my late congregation will dole out to me." "I am sorry to know it," said the curate.