He began to wonder if Griffin, and more latterly Aunt Laura, had been right: whether, after all, his mother had made an ambitious mistake in sending him to a public school when the ancient foundation of the Halesby Grammar School had stood waiting for the reception of him and his kind. There, in the fifth row on the left of the nave, sat Mr. Kelly, the grammar school’s head-master: a swarthy Irishman with a sinister, rather disappointed face. He wasn’t at all Edwin’s idea of a schoolmaster. Even old fat Leeming looked more distinguished than that. And yet, if he were good enough for the son of the opulent Walter Willis, he must surely be good enough for the son of an ordinary Halesby tradesman. For the greater part of the sermon these problems of social precedence engaged Edwin’s puzzled mind. It had come as something of a shock to him to find that his mother came of a farming stock, even though the farmers had lived in a Norman castle and had once been good enough to bear a lance in company with the Lords Marchers. Examining the face of his father, who appeared to be engrossed in the rector’s rhetoric, Edwin decided that his features were really far too distinguished to belong naturally to a country chemist. Here, perhaps, in spite of present circumstance, lay the explanation of his own indubitable gentility. It was funny, he reflected, that he had never heard anything from his mother about the origins of the Inglebys: he had not even known from what part of the country their stock had sprung, and this ignorance made the expedition on which they were to start on the morrow more enthralling than ever. It was quite possible that the discovery of some illustrious ancestry might put him right with himself and justify his claim to a birthright which at present seemed rather shadowy. Even if this failed, he decided, there remained Oxford. A fellow of Balliol (his imagination travelled fast) would have a right to hold up his head with any one in that congregation—Sir Joseph Hingston not excepted—even though the name of the fellow’s father happened to be printed on his toothbrush. It might even be for him to restore the prestige of the Ingleby name. “But in that case,” he thought, “it will be better for me to buy my toothbrushes somewhere else. . . .” Even the fact that Keats was a chemist did not modify this determination. The sermon ended, and during the collection a hymn was sung. Half an hour before this, a gowned verger had stolen on tiptoe to the Inglebys’ pew and whispered in Mr. Ingleby’s ear, depositing a wooden plate lined with velvet under the seat as furtively as if it were something of which he was ashamed. When the collection began Edwin’s father left his pew and began to carry the plate round the transept in which they were seated.