CHAPTER XIX--THE WHITE FEATHER
'The white doe's milk is not out of his mouth.'
SCOTT.
Clarence had come home free from all blots. His summer holiday had
been prevented by the illness of one of the other clerks, whose
place, Mr. Castleford wrote, he had so well supplied that ere long
he would be sure to earn his promotion. That kind friend had
several times taken him to spend a Sunday in the country, and, as we
afterwards had reason to think, would have taken more notice of him
but for the rooted belief of Mr. Frith that it was a case of
favouritism, and that piety and strictness were assumed to throw
dust in the eyes of his patron.
Such distrust had tended to render Clarence more reserved than ever,
and it was quite by the accident of finding him studying one of Mrs.
Trimmer's Manuals that I discovered that, at the request of his good
Rector, he had become a Sunday-school teacher, and was as much
interested as the enthusiastic girls; but I was immediately
forbidden to utter a word on the subject, even to Emily, lest she
should tell any one.
Such reserve was no doubt an outcome of his natural timidity. He
had to bear a certain amount of scorn and derision among some of his
fellow-clerks for the stricter habits and observances that could not
be concealed, and he dreaded any fresh revelation of them, partly
because of the cruel imputation of hypocrisy, partly because he
feared the bringing a scandal on religion by his weakness and
failures.
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