‘You must think me very empty-minded if you suppose I cannot endure my life without a young woman of the same age to sit opposite me and answer to all my idle fancies like an echo, or to walk out with me and help me admire the landscape, or to advise me what I should order for dinner,’ she said. ‘No, dear Mr. Clare, I want no companion, except Celia now and then. You will let her come and see me very often, won’t you?’ ‘As often as you like, or as often as she can be spared from her parish work,’ answered the vicar. ‘Ah, you are all such hard workers at the Vicarage,’ exclaimed Laura. ‘Some of us work hard enough, I believe,’ answered Mr. Clare, with a sigh. ‘I wish my son could make up his mind to work a little harder.’ ‘That will come in good time.’ ‘I hope so, but I am almost tired of waiting for that good time.’ ‘He is clever and artistic,’ said Laura. ‘His cleverness allowed him to leave the University without a degree, and his artistic faculties will never help him to a living,’ answered the vicar, bitterly. This only son of the vicar’s was a thorn in his side. Edward Clare was everybody’s favourite, and nobody’s enemy but his own. That was what the village said of him. He was good-looking, clever, agreeable, but he had no ballast. He was a feather to be blown by every puff of wind. He had never been able to discover the work which he had been sent into the world to do, but he had speedily found out the work for which he was not adapted. At the University he discovered that the curriculum of an English classical education was not fitted to the peculiar cast of his mind. How much better he could have done at Heidelberg or Bonn! But when he made this discovery he had wasted three years at Oxford, and had cost his father something very close to a thousand pounds. The vicar wanted his only son to go into the Church, and Edward had been educated with that view, but after failing to get his degree, Edward found out that he had a conscientious repugnance to the Church. His opinions were too broad. ‘A man who admires Ernest Renan as warmly as I do has no right to be a parson,’ said Edward, with agreeable frankness; so poor Mr. Clare had to submit to the disappointment of his most cherished hopes, because his son admired Renan. After having made up his mind upon this point Edward stayed at home, read a good deal in a desultory way, wrote a little, sketched a little in fine weather, fished, shot, and dawdled away life in the pleasantest manner, finding his days never so sweet as when they were spent at the Manor-house. Jasper Treverton had warmly esteemed the vicar, and he had liked the son for the father’s sake. Edward had always been welcome at the Manor-house while the old man lived, and as Edward’s sister was Laura Malcolm’s chosen friend, it was natural that the Oxonian should be very often in Laura’s society.