At this moment, Rachel entered with a small tea-tray: she could carry only little things, and a few at a time. She cast a glance of almost loving solicitude at the young man who now sat before her uncle with head bowed, and self-abasement on his honest countenance, then a look almost of expostulation at her uncle, as if interceding for a culprit, and begging the master not to be too hard upon him. But the little man smiled--such a sweet smile of re-assurance, that her face returned at once to its prevailing expression of content. She cleared a place on the table, set down her tray, and went to bring cups and saucers. CHAPTER XVII. POLWARTH’S PLAN. “I think I understand you now,” said Wingfold, after the little pause occasioned by the young woman’s entrance. “You would have a man who cannot be original, deal honestly in second-hand goods. Or perhaps rather, he should say to the congregation--‘This is not home-made bread I offer you, but something better. I got it from this or that baker’s shop. I have eaten of it myself, and it has agreed well with me and done me good. If you chew it well, I don’t doubt you also will find it good.’--Is that something like what you would have, Mr. Polwarth?” “Precisely,” answered the gate-keeper. “But,” he added, after a moment’s delay, “I should be sorry if you stopped there.” “Stopped there!” echoed Wingfold. “The question is whether I can begin there. You have no idea how ignorant I am--how little I have read!” “I have some idea of both, I fancy. I must have known considerably less than you at your age, for I was never at a university.” “But perhaps even then you had more of the knowledge which, they say, life only can give.” “I have it now at all events. But of that everyone has enough who lives his life. Those who gain no experience are those who shirk the king’s highway, for fear of encountering the Duty seated by the roadside.” “You ought to be a clergyman yourself, sir,” said Wingfold, humbly. “How is it that such as I----” Here he checked himself, knowing something of how it was. “I hope I ought to be just what I am, neither more nor less,” replied Polwarth. “As to being a clergyman, Moses had a better idea about such things, at least so far as concerns outsides, than you seem to have, Mr. Wingfold. He would never have let a man who in size and shape is a mere mockery of the human, stand up to minister to the congregation. But if you will let me help you, I shall be most grateful; for of late I have been oppressed with the thought that I serve no one but myself and my niece. I am in mortal fear of growing selfish under the weight of my privileges.”