impression that they were his protegees and worshippers, she found
that Ermine's point of view was quite the rectorial one, and that to
venerate the man for his office sake was nearly as hard to Ermine as
to herself, though the office was more esteemed.

Alison, the reserved, had held her tongue on his antecedents; but
Ermine was drawn into explaining that his father had been a minor
canon, who had eked out his means with a combination of chaplaincies
and parts of curacies, and by teaching at the school where his son
was educated. Indignant at the hack estimation in which his father
had been held, the son, far more justly viewing both the dignity and
duty of his office, was resolved to be respected; but bred up in
second rate society, had neither weight, talent, nor manners to veil
his aggressive self-assertion, and he was at this time especially
trying to the Curtises.

Cathedral music had been too natural to him for the endurance of an
unchoral service, and the prime labour of his life was to work up his
choir; but he was musical by education rather than nature, and having
begun his career with such mortal offence to the native fiddlers and
singers as to impel them into the arms of dissent, he could only
supply the loss from the school by his own voice, of which he was not
chary, though using it with better will than taste. The staple of
his choir were Rachel's scholars. Her turn had always been for boys,
and her class on Sunday mornings and two evenings in the week had
long been in operation before the reign of Mr. Touchett. Then two
lads, whose paternal fiddles had seceded to the Plymouth Brethren,
were suspended from all advantages by the curate, and Rachel was with
difficulty withheld from an explosion; but even this was less
annoying than the summons at the class-room door every Sunday