The mornings he always spent at work among his books, the afternoons in endless tramps over the parish, sometimes alone, sometimes with Catherine; and in the evenings, if Catherine was ‘at home’ twice a week to womankind, he had his nights when his study became the haunt and prey of half the boys in the place, who were free of everything, as soon as he had taught them to respect his books, and not to taste his medicines; other nights when he was lecturing or story-telling, in the club or in some outlying hamlet; or others again, when with Catherine beside him he would sit trying to think some of that religious passion which burned in both their hearts, into clear words or striking illustrations for his sermons. Then his choir was much upon his mind. He knew nothing about music, nor did Catherine; their efforts made Rose laugh irreverently when she got their letters at Berlin. But Robert believed in a choir chiefly as an excellent social and centralizing instrument. There had been none in Mr. Preston’s day. He was determined to have one, and a good one, and by sheer energy he succeeded, delighting in his boyish way over the opposition some of his novelties excited among the older and more stiff-backed inhabitants. ‘Let them talk,’ he would say brightly to Catherine. ‘They will come round; and talk is good. Anything to make them think, to stir the pool!’ Of course that old problem of the agricultural laborer weighed upon him--his grievances, his wants. He went about pondering the English land system, more than half inclined one day to sink part of his capital in a peasant-proprietor experiment, and engulfed the next in all the moral and economical objections to the French system. Land for allotments, at any rate, he had set his heart on. But in this direction, as in many others, the way was barred. All the land in the parish was the Squire’s, and not an inch of the Squire’s land would Henslowe let young Elsmere have anything to do with if he knew it. He would neither repair, nor enlarge the Workmen’s Institute; and he had a way of forgetting the Squire’s customary subscriptions to parochial objects, always paid through him, which gave him much food for chuckling whenever he passed Elsmere in the country lanes. The man’s coarse insolence and mean hatred made themselves felt at every turn, besmirching and embittering.