There were tears in the boy's eyes now. 'There are the others; I may be able to help them.'
'And,' added Mr. Underwood, 'I know that to be a really poor priest, there should be no one dependent on one, or it becomes, "Put me into one of the priest's offices, that I may eat a piece of bread." It is lowering! Yes, you are right. Even suppose you could be educated, by the time you were ordained, you would still have half these poor children on your hands, and it would only be my own story over again, and beginning younger. You are right, Felix; but I never saw the impossibility so fully before. I am glad some inward doubt held me back from the impulse to dedicate my first-born.'
'It shall be one of the others instead,' said Felix in his throat.
Mr. Underwood smiled a little, and put his finger on the verse in his beloved Epistle--'Look not every man on his own things but every man also on the things of others.'
'You really wish this. Do you consider what it involves?' he said.
'I think I do,' said Felix in a stifled voice.
'This is not as if it were a great publisher,' continued Mr. Underwood, 'with whom there would be no loss of position or real society; but a little bookseller in a country town is a mere tradesman, and though a man like Audley may take you up from time to time, it will never be on an absolute equality; and it will be more and more forgotten who you were. You will have to live in yourself and your home, _depending_ on no one else.'
'I can stand that,' said Felix, smiling. 'Father, indeed I thought of all that. Of course I don't like it, but I don't see how it is to be helped.'
'Sit down, Felix: let us go over it again. I suppose you don't know what our subsistence is at present.'
'I know you have £250 a year from Mr. Bevan.'
'Yes, I had £200 at first, and he added the £50 when the third curate was given up. That goes with me, of course, if not before. On the other hand, my poor good uncle, the wisest thing he ever did, made me insure my life for £5000, so there will be £150 a year to depend on, besides what we had of our own, only £2,350 left of it now. I have had to break into it for the doctor's bills, but at least there are no debts. Thank God, we have been saved from debt! I think,' he continued, 'that probably it will have to be brought down to twenty-two hundred before you have done with me. On the whole, then, there will be about £180 a year for you all to live upon. Are you understanding, Felix?'