But after that event the old clergyman had gone back to his residence in the Close at Ely, and there John Grey had had the home of his youth.

He had been brought up under his father's eye, having been sent to no public school.

But he had gone to Cambridge, had taken college honours, and had then, his father dying exactly at this time, declined to accept a fellowship.

His father had left to him an income of some fifteen hundred a year, and with this he sat himself down, near to his college friends, near also to the old cathedral which he loved, in the house which his father had built.
But though Nethercoats possessed no beauty of scenery, though the country around it was in truth as uninteresting as any country could be, it had many delights of its own.

The house itself was as excellent a residence for a country gentleman of small means as taste and skill together could construct.