"How did your brother come to be a minister?"

"He's a _clergyman_ of the Church of England"--with loftiness.

"Well, that's more of a thing than a minister; how did he come by it?"

"He was clever, and father was able to send him to Oxford. He was a good
deal older than I was. I suppose he took to the Church because he
thought it his duty."

"And now that he's out here he wants to sink the shop?"

"Oh, as to that"--coldly--"when he was quite young, in England, he got
in with swells. He's tremendously clever. There were men in England that
thought no end of him."

"Did he lie low about the shop there?"

"I don't know"--shortly--"I was at school then."

Bates, perceiving that his questions were considered vastly offensive,
desisted, but not with that respectfulness of mind that he would have
had had Alec's father been a clergyman as well as his brother. Bates's
feeling in this matter was what it was by inheritance, exactly as was
the shape of his nose or the length of his limbs; it required no
exercise of thought on his part to relegate Alec Trenholme to a place of
less consequence.

Trenholme assuaged his own ill-temper by going to take out his pink and