to watch over the development of your moral and
spiritual nature, but alas! you will not let us see your moral and spiritual
nature - at times we are almost inclined to doubt whether you have a moral and
spiritual nature at all. Of your inner life, my dear, we know nothing beyond
such scraps as we can glean in spite of you, from little things which escape you
almost before you know that you have said them.«
    The boy winced at this. It made him feel hot and uncomfortable all over. He
knew so well how careful he ought to be, and yet do what he could, from time to
time his forgetfulness of the part betrayed him into unreserve. His mother saw
that he winced, and enjoyed the scratch she had given him. Had she felt less
confident of victory she had better have foregone the pleasure of touching as it
were the eyes at the end of the snail's horns in order to enjoy seeing the snail
draw them in again - but she knew that when she had got him well down into the
sofa, and held his hand she had the enemy almost absolutely at her mercy, and
could do pretty much what she liked.
    »Papa does not feel,« she continued, »that you love him with that fulness
and unreserve which would prompt you to have no concealment from him, and to
tell him everything freely and fearlessly as your most loving earthly friend
next only to your Heavenly Father. Perfect love, as we know, casteth out fear:
your father loves you perfectly, my darling, but he does not feel as though you
loved him perfectly in return. If you fear him it is because you do not love him
as he deserves, and I know it sometimes cuts him to the very heart to think that
he has earned from you a deeper and more willing sympathy than you display
towards him. Oh Ernest, Ernest, do not grieve one who is so good and
noble-hearted by conduct which I can call by no other name than ingratitude.«
    Ernest could never stand being spoken to in this way by his mother: for he
still believed that she loved him, and that he was fond of her and had a friend
in her - up to a certain point. But his mother was beginning to come to the end
of her tether; she had played the domestic confidence trick upon him times out
of number already. Over and over again had she wheedled from him all she wanted
to know, and afterwards got him into the most horrible scrape by telling the
whole to Theobald. Ernest had remonstrated