The New Rector by Stanley J. Weyman

I have heard that the bitterest pang a boy feels on returning to school after his first holidays is reserved for the moment when he opens his desk and recalls the happy hour, full of joyous anticipation, when he had closed that desk with a bang. Oh, the pity of it! The change from that boy to this, from that morning to this evening! How meanly, how inadequately-so it seems to the urchin standing with smudged cheeks before the well-remembered grammar-did the lad who turned the key estimate his real happiness! How little did he enter into it or deserve it!

Just such a pang shot through the young rector's heart as he passed into the rectory porch after that momentous scene at Mrs. Hammond's. His rage had had time to die down. With reflection had come a full sense of his position. As he entered the house he remembered-remembered only too well, grinding his teeth over the recollection-how secure, how free from embarrassments, how happy had been his situation when he last issued from that door a few, a very few, hours before. Such troubles as had then annoyed him seemed trifles light as air now. Mr. Bonamy's writ, the dislike of one section in the parish-how could he have let such things as these make him miserable for a moment?