
lived three hundred years without finding reason to change a single one of its
opinions.
    I should doubt whether he ever got as far as doubting the wisdom of his
church upon any single matter. His scent for possible mischief was tolerably
keen; so was Christina's; and it is likely that if either of them detected in
him or herself the first faint symptoms of a want of faith they were nipped no
less peremptorily in the bud than signs of self-will in Ernest were, and I
should imagine more successfully. Yet Theobald considered himself, and was
generally considered to be, and indeed perhaps was, an exceptionally truthful
person; indeed he was generally looked upon as the embodiment of all those
virtues which make the poor respectable, and the rich respected. In the course
of time he and his wife became persuaded, even to unconsciousness, that no one
could even dwell under their roof without deep cause for thankfulness. Their
children, their servants, their parishioners must be fortunate ipso facto that
they were theirs. There was no road to happiness here or hereafter, but the road
that they had themselves travelled, no good people who did not think as they did
upon every subject, and no reasonable person who had wants, the gratification of
which would be inconvenient to them - Theobald and Christina.
    This was how it came to pass that the children were white and puny. They
were suffering from homesickness. They were starving through being over-crammed
with the wrong things. Nature came down upon them, but she did not come down on
Theobald and Christina. Why should she? They were not leading a starved
existence. There are two classes of people in this world, those who sin and
those who are sinned against; if a man must belong to either he had better do so
to the first than to the second.
 

                                   Chapter 27

I will give no more of the details of my hero's earlier years. Enough that he
struggled through them, and at twelve years old knew every page of his Latin and
Greek grammars by heart. He had read the greater part of Virgil, Horace, and
Livy, and I do not know how many Greek plays; he was proficient in arithmetic,
knew the first four books of Euclid thoroughly, and had a fair knowledge of
French. It was now time he went to school, and to school he was accordingly to
go, under the famous Dr. Skinner of Roughborough.
    Theobald had known Dr. Skinner slightly at Cambridge. He had been a burning
and a shining light in every position he had filled from his boyhood upwards.
