MARY’S mind was supposed to be very youthful and unformed. She had been kept longer a child than is usual, and yet, by reason of a sort of solitude in which she lived in the midst of a family which was, yet was not, absolutely her own family, her thoughts had exercised themselves silently on many subjects not commonly considered by children; but all in a shy and voiceless way, so that nobody round her had any conception of many reasonings which had gone on in her mind. When Mr. Asquith came to Horton she had been very curious about him, and when he failed to interest the rest, he became still more a curiosity and interest to Mary.

Among the subjects which occupied her silent thoughts there had been many little questions about the clergymen and their ways. As a matter of fact clergymen were more frequent visitors at Horton than any other class of men, and Mary had secretly been a critic of them all her life. Her Uncle Hugh was a clergyman whom she saw perpetually. He was a parish priest, with not very much to do, and one who was fully convinced that he did his duty. But Mary was not equally convinced. There was a good deal in his life which did not seem to that little critic to be much in harmony with what she read in her New Testament. To be sure, she knew well enough that every man who is in the Church can’t go wandering about the world like St. Paul, teaching and preaching to the heathen.

Mary was aware that the change of times must be taken into account, and that the steady work of a parish has to be considered as well as the romance of missionary devotion. But she could not quite reconcile Uncle Hugh to the standard in which she believed, even after everything was taken into account. He was too comfortable, too much at his ease, had more spare time than he ought to have had, and, indeed, altogether was too like Uncle John, who was the merely secular head of the family, than satisfied the rigorous ideal of youth. There was indeed very little difference between Uncle Hugh and Uncle John. The elder brother sat in a little room which was called his business-room, whereas the special retirement of the other was spoken of as the study: and the parson wore a white tie instead of the cosy checked one which generally enveloped the throat of the Squire, and a black coat instead of a shooting-jacket; but during the week these were the chief differences between them. Mary, all silent in the background, not considered by anybody to have an opinion at all, arraigned these two before her private tribunal, and was not satisfied, and concluded that there should have been a great deal more difference. To be sure, on Sunday there was difference enough. Uncle Hugh in his surplice was a commanding figure, and he preached while Uncle John yawned and listened. He was not a very good preacher.

None of these things are hid from the inexorable little judges from seven to seventeen, who give us all our due. In her heart, though she was fond of him, she was not satisfied with Uncle Hugh as a clergyman. His bishop was very well satisfied, but not Mary. And the curates were still less satisfactory. The High Church development was only in its beginning in those days, and curates made little or no pretensions to sacerdotal superiority, but were just young men in the Church, as their brothers were young men in the army. They were very good-natured young fellows most of them, very willing to give a shilling or even half-a-crown to poor old Hodge—not quite so willing to administer spiritual consolation or pray by his bedside—yet, by the aid of the service for the visitation of the sick, getting manfully through that too, and then, with a sigh of relief, coming up to croquet at the Hall. They had always time for croquet, and took enormously long walks, and had a considerable difficulty in getting through the long days in a dull little place where, as they would sometimes complain, there was nothing to do. Most of the young men who had been curates to Mr. Prescott of Horton Rectory, left him with the best of recommendations; but little Mary, that little Rhadamantha, had them all up at the bar before her, and judged them severely, though she never said a word.

But Mr. Asquith was something altogether new, and of a different order of being. When John said he was dull, and the girls that there was nothing in him, Mary demurred, as has been seen. She said to herself that Mr. Asquith was nice, and she liked the looks of him; and having thus, as it were, given herself from the first a brief in his defence, it was not so easy to put on the judge’s cap and pronounce the verdict. Something, perhaps, from the beginning softened that judgment. She expected, to start with, that he would be different: and he was different. The dinners at the Hall bored him, which was a pity; and he would have none of the croquet, and instead of complaining that there was nothing to do, his excuse was that he had not time enough for the amusements which the young people of the parish set such store by. He had not time. The other curates had not known what to do with their time. Certainly he was different.

And then Mary had begun to meet him about in all the cottages where there were sick people, where there was special need of kindness and help. He did not give away shillings, except rarely, for he had very few to give. He was not a young man on his promotion, waiting till the family living should be vacant, or till somebody should give him a benefice, but had thrown himself into his work as if he never meant to go away. Mary made some small investigations on this point in the most innocent and natural way. She said to the Rector, “Uncle Hugh, I suppose Mr. Asquith is going to stay longer than the other curates,” at a moment when Mr. Prescott was unoccupied, and had time to answer the question.

“Eh?” cried the Rector, “Asquith stay longer? What makes you think so?”

“He talks as if he were always to be here,” said Mary.

“Oh, do you think so? This little girl is not such a fool as she looks,” said his reverence. “I’ve noticed that too.”

“Don’t speak to Mary so,” said Mrs. Hugh Prescott, who was somewhat matter of fact. “She is not a fool at all, oh no; she has a great deal of observation. But Mr. Asquith had better not deceive himself, Hugh, for you know you have always liked a change of curates. Perhaps I had better say a word——”

The Rector’s wife was fond of saying a word, which generally made the person addressed very angry, though she had no such meaning. Her husband stopped her with a movement of his hand. “Don’t, my dear,” he said. “It is not that he thinks too much of himself. He has not the prospects of the other young men. He is not serving his apprenticeship here with the hope of soon setting up for himself.”

“You speak of the Church as if it were a trade, Hugh.”

“Do I, my dear? Well, perhaps it is something the same after all, if you think of it—for most people are looking out for something better. I should not mind being a canon or a prebendary myself, or even a dean.”

“And is not Mr. Asquith looking out for something better?” said Mary. She was more interested in this question than in any other that could at the moment be presented to her.

“Poor fellow! I don’t know that he has anything better to look for,” said the Rector. “He has few friends, and nobody to push him. I should not wonder if he remained a curate all his life.”

“Nobody does that nowadays,” said Mrs. Hugh Prescott. “Something always turns up. A poor clergyman, so far as I can see, has just as many chances as one that is well off. He is kind to somebody’s child, or attends somebody’s mother on her deathbed, or something of that sort. There is a special providence for poor curates, I think.”

Mary took in all this with quick ears, and asked herself, whether, in reality, a special providence was all that Mr. Asquith had to look to. “There is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O God,” we say in church day by day: but even that pious sentiment seems to convey a veiled opinion that other aid would be desirable: but when it is said of a man that a special providence is wanted for his promotion, that man’s hopes do not, to most of the world, seem particularly well founded. Mary felt with a curious swelling of her heart that she was glad this was the case with Mr. Asquith. She was proud of it, if pride is possible in such a matter. When she tested him by the first great commission which sent men out to preach without even bread in their scrip, much less money in their purse—that test which no one had borne as yet—she felt that at last here was one who could bear it; and this gave Mary a degree of pleasure quite incommensurate with his stay in the parish, or of any possible knowledge he could have of her, or she of him. After all she had nothing at all to do with it; and what were his principles of action, or how he was moved by the absence of all means of advancing himself, she had not the least way of knowing. It might be this that made him what John called dull. Mary could not tell. But she felt in her heart, though she was so ignorant, that the real clergyman for whom she had been looking had appeared at last—the only one who could bear the test which had not succeeded at all with the rest of the curates, nor even Uncle Hugh.

And this was the conclusion which had been formed in her mind even before she began to meet Mr. Asquith in the cottages. She was keenly alive to his demeanour there. It was as if she had gone to collect evidence upon this subject. When she was giving poor Sally Williams her pudding, she was at the same moment mentally weighing the curate and his manners to poor Mrs. Williams, and making him out. Perhaps Mary was not quite an impartial judge, being biassed, as has been said, by the other pieces of evidence which she had already put together, and even by something more subtle still, by her own foregone conclusion, and certain weakening prepossessions that had stolen into her heart. But about the time when Mr. Asquith took fright and began to shut himself up and relinquish his visits to the cottages, Mary had completed all her investigations, or had forgotten them, or had come to think them the most unnecessary, the most impertinent of inquiries, having somehow suddenly and unconsciously been led to the conclusion that there was nobody like Mr. Asquith, and that whatever he did became, from the fact of his doing it, right. It gave all the more weight to her opinion in this respect that she was not, as has been seen, a girl who naturally believed in curates, or took the excellence of that class for granted, as some young women do. It was, however, a somewhat severe test of Mary’s faith that almost simultaneously with her full conviction of it, this perfect man should suddenly begin to conduct himself in so strange a way. For she could not help being struck by the fact that she met him no longer, even had the poor people been silent on the subject, which they were not. They poured out their complaints to her, sometimes quite simply, sometimes with a little mischievous meaning. “Mr. Asquith? We haven’t seen Mr. Asquith, no—not for ten days; him as used to come in and give my poor Sally a comfor’able word ’most every day. I don’t know what’s the cause. I only hope, Miss Mary, as we’ve done nothing to offend him. It ain’t with our will if we has, for a kinder gentleman never come inside my door.”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Williams, I am sure he would not take offence. Perhaps he is very busy; you know a clergyman—has to study a great deal,” said Mary, pausing to pick up the first excuse that came handy.

Mrs. Williams shook her head. “If it had been most clergymen,” she said, “I shouldn’t have wondered, for they soon tires—but Mr. Asquith! oh, he did seem another sort, he did!” the poor woman cried.

And then old Mrs. Sims at the almshouses had her little word to put in: “I can’t think what’s come over Mr. Asquith, that was such a kind gentleman. He’s not come no more since the last time as he met you here, Miss Mary. It couldn’t be as a fine, tall gentleman like ’im was afraid of you.”

“Why should anyone be afraid of me?” Mary cried, with a laugh. But she was glad to get outside that keen-sighted old woman’s cottage, for she felt the heat of a coming blush which swept all over her, up to the very roots of her hair, a blush which sent all her blood coursing through her veins, and made her feel disposed to laugh again, and then to cry. Afraid of her! Why should any one, much less the curate, be afraid of her, a little person who was only Mary, and whom nobody made any account of? But as she asked herself that question, Mary knew that it was so. She knew with a sudden flash of discovery, which was very wonderful and sweet, that Mr. Asquith was afraid of her, of loving her, and of betraying he loved her; and that he was making a stand against his heart and trying to avoid her, and put her out of his life. It was a tremendous, overpowering discovery; but after she had got accustomed to the thought, Mary once more laughed in her heart; for she knew by instinct, though she had never had any experience, that these tactics were never successful, and that in this endeavour Mr. Asquith would fail.