and his work. His desire for her farther acquaintance was therefore somewhat moderated, and he was not prepared to answer her question with much zeal.
"All parish clergymen have plenty of work, if they choose to do it."
"Ah! that is it; is it not, Mr. Robarts? If they choose to do it? A great many do—many that I know do; and see what a result they have. But many neglect it—and see what a result they have. I think it ought to be the happiest life that a man can lead, that of a parish clergyman, with a wife and family, and a sufficient income."
"I think it is," said Mark Robarts, asking himself whether the contentment accruing to him from such blessings had made him satisfied at all points. He had all these things of which Miss Dunstable spoke, and yet he had told his wife, the other day, that he could not afford to neglect the acquaintance of a rising politician like Harold Smith.
"What I find fault with is this," continued Miss Dunstable, "that we expect clergymen to do their duty, and don't give them a sufficient income—give them hardly any income at all. Is it not a scandal that an educated gentleman with a family should be made to work half his life, and perhaps the whole, for a pittance of seventy pounds a year?"
Mark said that it was a scandal, and thought of Mr. Evan Jones and his daughter—and thought also of his own worth, and his own house, and his own nine hundred a year.
"And yet you clergymen are so proud—aristocratic would be the genteel word, I know—that you won't take the money of common, ordinary poor people. You must be paid from land and endowments, from tithe and Church property. You can't bring yourself to work for what you earn, as lawyers and doctors do. It is better that curates should starve than undergo such ignominy as that."
"It is a long subject, Miss Dunstable."
"A very long one; and that means that I am not to say any more about it."
"I did not mean that exactly."
"Oh! but you did, though, Mr. Robarts; and I can take a hint of that kind when I get it. You clergymen like to keep those long subjects for your sermons, when no one
