School was just over. The boys belonging to Arlingford College poured out into the playing fields, the juniors tumbling over one another in haste and confusion, as though the premises were on fire behind them; the seniors strolling leisurely out, or gathering in small groups near the school door, to arrange their plans for the afternoon. Dr Stansfield, the headmaster, still remained, in conversation with Reginald Margetts, a connection of his wife’s, a young man of two-and-twenty, who was passing the Oxford long vacation at his house, and had come in with a message from Mrs Stansfield. One of the assistant masters also, George Rivers by name, sat at his desk, looking over some exercises of which he had not completed the revision. He was near about Margetts’ age, a well-built young fellow with an intelligent and pleasant face.
“Well, that will do, Redgy,” said the Doctor. “You may tell Mrs Stansfield that I do not know, and cannot conjecture who her visitor may have been; but if he is to return in half an hour, I shall be in the library ready to receive him. At present I must have a little talk with George Rivers here, before I leave the school.”
“I am going to walk with Rivers presently, sir,” said Margetts. “Shall you be long?”
“A quarter of an hour, I daresay. George will join you when we have done. George,” he continued, as Margetts left the room, “I have looked over the papers you have sent me. I intended to have had this conversation, even if you had not invited it. It is time that some conclusion was come to. You have not, I fear, received any fresh information?”
“I am sorry to say I have not.”
“I am sorry too; but I hardly expected anything else. You are, I think, more than one-and-twenty?”
“Two-and-twenty in a few months, sir.”
“Indeed. Well, there ought to be no further delay in the arrangement of your plans for the future. Do you not think so?”
“Yes, sir; and I believe I have made up my mind.”
“What have you resolved to do?”
“Before I go into that, Dr Stansfield, I ought to thank you for the great kindness you have shown me. I should be a pauper, or something like it, but for you.”
“We need not speak of that. Go on.”
“Well, sir, I feel that I ought not to remain longer in England. I have already trespassed too long on your bounty.”
“If that is your reason for leaving England, you had better reconsider it. Whatever might have been the case three years and a half ago, you are not costing me anything now. Your assistant-mastership, small as the salary is, with what you have of your own, is enough to keep you, and you fully earn it. You have, I believe, once or twice expressed a wish to enter holy orders?”
“It has been my wish for some time past, sir.”
“Very well. You could not be ordained for more than a year. Before that I think I could arrange with the Bishop for you to be ordained on your mastership here. There is not so much difficulty made about a title as used to be the case.”
“You are most kind, sir. I hope you will not think me ungrateful; but I feel it to be my first duty to find my mother and sister, if I can.”
“I cannot blame you. But I should like to know what steps you mean to take. I understood you to say you had obtained no further information.”
“No; and I do n