"
"And then?"
"I shall go for a year to a theological college, and test my fitness
to offer myself for Holy Orders."
A look of satisfaction on his sister's part made him add, "Perhaps
you were disappointed that I was not ordained on my fellowship seven
years ago."
"Certainly I was; but I was in Russia, and I thought you knew best,
so I said nothing."
"You were right. You would only have heard what would have made you
anxious. Not that there was much to alarm you, but it is not good
for any one to be left so entirely without home influences as I was
all the time you spent abroad. I fell among a set of daring talkers,
who thought themselves daring thinkers; and though the foundations
were never disturbed with me, I was not disposed to bind myself more
closely to what might not bear investigation, and I did not like the
aspect of clerical squabbles on minutiae. There was a tide against
the life that carried me along with it, half from sound, half from
unsound, motives, and I shrank from the restraint, outward and
inward."
"Very likely it was wise, and the best thing in the end. But what
has brought you to it?"
"I hope not as the resource of a shelved schoolmaster."
"Oh, no; you are not shelved. See how you have improved the school.
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