"Yes; who are--like you and me--are miserable together, they are happy! See?" "I see," said the curate gravely. "Yes, you are right there; but we can't go on living on a diet of joint misery. We shall have to face the future. What are we going to do about it?" Then Eileen spoke up boldly for the first time. "Gerald," she said, "we shall simply have to manage on a hundred a year." But the curate shook his head. "Dearest, I should be an utter cad if I allowed you to do such a thing," he said. "A hundred a year is less than two pounds a week!" "A lot of people live on less than two pounds a week," Eileen pointed out longingly. "Yes; I know. If we could rent a three-shilling cottage and I could go about with a spotted handkerchief round my neck, and you could scrub the doorsteps _coram populo_, we might be very comfortable; but the clergy belong to the black-coated class, and people in the lower ranks of the black-coated class are the poorest people in the whole wide world. They have to spend money on luxuries--collars and charwomen, and so on--which a workingman can spend entirely on necessities. It wouldn't merely mean no pretty dresses and a lot of hard work for you, Eileen. It would mean starvation! Believe me--I know! Some of my friends have tried it--and I know!" "What happened to them?" asked Eileen fearfully. "They all had to come down in the end--some soon, some late, but all in time--to taking parish relief." "Parish relief?" "Yes; not official, regulation, rate-aided charity, but the infinitely more humiliating charity of their well-to-do neighbors--quiet checks, second-hand dresses, and things like that. No, little girl; you and I are too proud--too proud of the cloth--for that. We will never give a handle to the people who are always waiting to have a fling at the improvident clergy--not if it breaks our hearts, we won't!" "You are quite right, dear," said Eileen quietly. "We must wait." Then the curate said the most difficult thing he had said yet:-- "I shall have to go away from here." Eileen's hand turned cold in his. "Why?" she whispered; but she knew. "Because if we wait here we shall wait forever. The last curate in Much Moreham--what happened to him?" "He died." "Yes--at fifty-five; and he had been here for thirty years. Preferment does not come in sleepy villages. I must go back to London." "The East End?" "East or south or north--it doesn't signify. Anywhere but west. In the east and south and north there is always work to be done--hard work. And if a parson has no money and no brains and no influence, and can only work--run clothing clubs and soup kitchens, and reclaim drunkards--London is the place for him. So off I go to London, my beloved, to lay the foundations of Paradise for you and me--for you and me!" There was a long silence. Then the pair rose to their feet and smiled on each other extremely cheerfully, because each suspected the other--rightly--of low spirits.