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his uncle. They did not speak. In a moment Philip saw tears
slowly falling down her cheeks. His heart was suddenly
wrung because he caused her pain. In her tight black dress,
made by the dressmaker down the street, with her wrinkled
face and pale tired eyes, her gray hair still done in the frivo-
lous ringlets of her youth, she was a ridiculous but strangely
pathetic figure. Philip saw it for the first time.
Afterwards, when the Vicar was shut up in his study with
the curate, he put his arms round her waist.
‘I say, I’m sorry you’re upset, Aunt Louisa,’ he said. ‘But
it’s no good my being ordained if I haven’t a real vocation,
is it?’
‘I’m so disappointed, Philip,’ she moaned. ‘I’d set my
heart on it. I thought you could be your uncle’s curate, and
then when our time came—after all, we can’t last for ever,
can we?—you might have taken his place.’
Philip shivered. He was seized with panic. His heart beat
like a pigeon in a trap beating with its wings. His aunt wept
softly, her head upon his shoulder.
‘I wish you’d persuade Uncle William to let me leave Ter-
canbury. I’m so sick of it.’
But the Vicar of Blackstable did not easily alter any ar-
rangements he had made, and it had always been intended
that Philip should stay at King’s School till he was eighteen,
and should then go to Oxford. At all events he would not
hear of Philip leaving then, for no notice had been given
and the term’s fee would have to be paid in any case.
‘Then will you give notice for me to leave at Christmas?’
said Philip, at the end of a long and often bitter conversa-

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