"But, surely, my boy," cried his mother, "you have forgotten what you said to me last night?" Harry frowned and glared, for it is one thing to breathe your ridiculous aspirations to the dearest of mothers in the dead of night, and quite another thing to confide them to a singularly unsympathetic uncle in broad daylight. But Mrs. Ringrose had turned to her brother, and she would go on: "There is one thing he tells me he would rather do than anything else in the world--and I am sure he could do it best." "What is that?" "Write!" Harry groaned. Mr. Walthew raised his eyebrows. Mrs. Ringrose sat triumphant. "Write what, my dear Mary?" "Articles--poems--books." A grim resignation was given to Harry, and he laughed aloud as the clergyman shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. "On his own showing," said Uncle Spencer, "I should doubt whether he has--er--the education--for that." Mrs. Ringrose looked displeased, and even dangerous, for the moment; but she controlled her feelings on perceiving that the boy himself was now genuinely amused. "You are quite mistaken," she contented herself with saying. "Have I never shown you the parody on Gray's Elegy he won a guinea for when he was fourteen? Then I will now." And the fond lady was on her feet, only to find her boy with his back to the door, and laughter, shame and anger fighting for his face. "You shall do no such thing, mother," Harry said firmly. "That miserable parody!" "It was nothing of the kind. It began, 'The schoolbell tolls the knell----'" "Hush, mother!" "'Of parting play'" she added wilfully. Mr. Walthew's eyebrows had reached their apogee. "That is quite enough, Mary," said he. "I disapprove of parodies, root and branch; they are invariably vulgar; and when the poem parodied has a distinctly religious tendency, as in this case, they are also irreverent and profane. I am only glad to see that Henry is himself ashamed of his lucubration. If he should write aught of a religious character, and get it into print--a difficult matter, Henry, for one so indifferently equipped--my satisfaction will not be lessened by my surprise. Meanwhile let him return to those classics he should never have neglected, for by the dead languages only can we hope to obtain a mastery of our own; and I, for my part, will do my best in what, after all, I regard as a much less hopeless direction. Good-bye, Mary. I trust that I shall see you both on Sunday." But Mrs. Ringrose would not let him go without another word for her boy's parody. "When I read it to Mr. Lowndes," said she, to Harry's horror, "he said that he thought that a lad who could write so well at fourteen should have a future before him. So you see everybody is not of your opinion, Spencer; and Mr. Lowndes saw nothing vulgar." "Do I understand you to refer," said Mr. Walthew, bristling, "to the person who has done me the honour of calling upon me in connection with your affairs?" "He is the only Mr. Lowndes I know."