Lucy nodded and smiled once more. “I don’t think I shall want to marry,” she said; but while she spoke she was making a quiet calculation of quite a different character. “Jock is eight and I am seventeen,” she was saying within herself, “how old will Jock be when I am twenty-five?” It does not seem a difficult question; but she was not great in arithmetic, and it took her a moment or two to make it out. When she had succeeded her face brightened up. “Still young enough to be educated,” she added, always within herself, and this quite restored her patience and her cheerfulness. “It will be very funny,” she said, “to see the rector and Mr. Williamson consulting together. I wonder how they will begin; I am sure Mr. Williamson will put on colored clothes to show how independent he is; and the doctor--the doctor will smile and rub his hands.” “You forget,” said old Trevor, with a slight sharpness of tone, though he laughed, “that such things have been as that I should outlive the doctor. He’s younger than I am, to be sure, but I would not have you to calculate on my death before the doctor. It might be quite a different rector. It might be a young man that would, perhaps, put in claims to the heiress himself. But I’ll give you one piece of advice, Lucy, beforehand. Never marry a parson. They’re always in the way. Other kinds of men have their occupations; but a parson with a rich wife is always lounging about. Your mother used to say so; and she was a very sensible woman. She had an offer from one of the chapel ministers when she was young; but she would have nothing to say to him. A man in slippers, always indoors, was what she never could abide.” “I don’t think the rector would be like that, papa,” said Lucy; “he doesn’t look as if he ever wore slippers at all--” “Well, perhaps, it is the other kind I am thinking of,” said Mr. Trevor, who had not much acquaintance with the class which he called “church parsons,” though his liberality of mind was such that he had brought up Lucy partially, at least, as a church woman. His conduct, in this respect, was much the same as it was in reference to the distinctions of society. He wanted her to have her share in all--to be familiar alike with poverty and riches, and, as a kind of moral consequence, with church and chapel, too.