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
possibility 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.
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