"The ineffable fol y," he wrote, on receiving his son's letter, "of your fancied passion for Miss Al aby fil s me with the gravest apprehensions. Making every al owance for a lover's blindness, I stil have no doubt that the lady herself is a wel -conducted and amiable young person, who would not disgrace our family, but were she ten times more desirable as a daughter-in-law than I can al ow myself to hope, your joint poverty is an insuperable objection to your

marriage. I have four other children besides yourself, and my

expenses do not permit me to save money. This year they have been especial y heavy, indeed I have had to purchase two not inconsiderable pieces of land which happened to come into the market and were

necessary to complete a property which I have long wanted to round off in this way. I gave you an education regardless of expense, which has

put you in possession of a comfortable income, at an age when many young men are dependent. I have thus started you fairly in life, and may claim that you should cease to be a drag upon me further. Long engagements are proverbial y unsatisfactory, and in the present case the prospect seems interminable. What interest, pray, do you suppose I have that I could get a living for you? Can I go up and down the country begging people to provide for my son because he has taken it into his head to want to get married without sufficient means? "I do not wish to write unkindly, nothing can be farther from my real

feelings towards you, but there is often more kindness in plain

speaking than in any amount of soft words which can end in no

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substantial performance. Of course, I bear in mind that you are of age, and can therefore please yourself, but if you choose to claim the strict letter of the law, and act without consideration for your

father's feelings, you must not be surprised if you one day find that I have claimed a like liberty for myself.--Believe me, your

affectionate father, G. PONTIFEX."I found this letter along with those already given and a few more which I need not give, but throughout which the same tone prevails, and in al of which there is the more or less obvious shake of the wil near the end of the letter. Remembering Theobald's general dumbness concerning his

father for the many years I knew him after his father's death, there was an eloquence in the preservation of the letters and in their endorsement

"Letters from my father," which seemed to have with it some faint odour of health and nature.Theobald did not show his father's letter to Christina, nor, indeed, I believe to anyone. He was by nature secretive, and had been repressed

too much and too early to be capable of railing or blowing off steam where his father was concerned. His sense of wrong was stil

inarticulate, felt as a dul dead weight ever present day by day, and if he woke at night-time stil continual y present, but he hardly knew what it was. I was about the closest friend he had, and I saw but little of

him, for I could not get on with him for long together. He said I had no reverence; whereas I thought that I had plenty of reverence for what

deserved to be revered, but that the gods which he deemed golden were in reality made of baser metal. He never, as I have said, complained of his father to me, and his only other friends were, like himself, staid and

prim, of evangelical tendencies, and deeply imbued with a sense of the sinfulness of any act of insubordination to parents--good young men, in fact--and one cannot blow off steam to a good young man.When Christina was informed by her lover of his father's opposition, and

of the time which must probably elapse before they could be married, she offered--with how much sincerity I know not--to set him free from his

engagement; but Theobald declined to be released--"not at least," as he said, "at present." Christina and Mrs Al aby knew they could manage him, and on this not very satisfactory footing the engagement was continued.His engagement and his refusal to be released at once raised Theobald in

his own good opinion. Dul as he was, he had no smal share of quiet self-approbation. He admired himself for his University distinction, for the purity of his life (I said of him once that if he had only a better temper he would be as innocent as a newlaid egg) and for his unimpeachable integrity in money matters. He did not despair of

advancement in the Church when he had once got a living, and of course it was within the bounds of possibility that he might one day become a

Bishop, and Christina said she felt convinced that this would ultimately be the case.As was natural for the daughter and intended wife of a clergyman, Christina's thoughts ran much upon religion, and she was resolved that

even though an exalted position in this world were denied to her and Theobald, their virtues should be ful y appreciated in the next. Her religious opinions coincided absolutely with Theobald's own, and many a conversation did she have with him about the glory of God, and the

completeness with which they would devote themselves to it, as soon as Theobald had got his living and they were married. So certain was she of the great results which would then ensue that she wondered at times at

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the blindness shown by Providence towards its own truest interests in not kil ing off the rectors who stood between Theobald and his living a

little faster.In those days people believed with a simple downrightness which I do not observe among educated men and women now. It had never so much as crossed Theobald's mind to doubt the literal accuracy of any syl able in the Bible. He had never seen any book in which this was disputed, nor

met with anyone who doubted it. True, there was just a little scare about geology, but there was nothing in it. If it was said that God made the world in six days, why He did make it in six days, neither in more

nor less; if it was said that He put Adam to sleep, took out one of his ribs and made a woman of it, why it was so as a matter of course. He,

Adam, went to sleep as it might be himself, Theobald Pontifex, in a garden, as it might be the garden at Crampsford Rectory during the summer months when it was so pretty, only that it was larger, and had some tame wild animals in it. Then God came up to him, as it might be Mr Al aby or his father, dexterously took out one of his ribs without waking him, and miraculously healed the wound so that no trace of the operation remained. Final y, God had taken the rib perhaps into the greenhouse, and had

turned it into just such another young woman as Christina. That was how it was done; there was neither difficulty nor shadow of difficulty about the matter. Could not God do anything He liked, and had He not in His

own inspired Book told us that He had done this?This was the average attitude of fairly educated young men and women

towards the Mosaic cosmogony fifty, forty, or even twenty years ago.