CHAPTER EIGHT.
HOW I WAS CAST ADRIFT.
Master Udal, the minister, was not a man to bandy compliments.

He told me, as we rose next morning, that he had neither the means nor the desire to keep me at Kingston.

There was nothing to make my stay of any service to him; nor did the thickness of my skull encourage him to keep me there for my soul's sake.
"In short," said he, "what is to prevent you from going at once?
You can find breakfast for yourself on the road as soon as I could find it for you here, and it beseems a body of your size,"-- heavens! what a name to call me--"better to be serving your calling in London than dangling here at the skirts of a parcel of women.

So away with you, Humphrey Dexter, and if you should visit us a week hence, come at an hour when you can return by the road you came the self-same evening." I should have been angry, but that I knew I had lost him his nag at Oxford, and that the good man (how, I could not guess), was going to board and lodge my poor mistress and her little ones while their distress lasted.

I had nothing for it but to obey him meekly.