Unfortunate Lady Isabel! But parents and guardians have, at least, the
power of the closure.

"We needn't talk about it now," says the hard-pressed mother, "when
you're grown up you will understand it all better--"

With Christian, however, this formula was less efficacious than with
her elder brothers and sister. Her questioning, analysing, unwearying
brain ignored the closure, and evaded poor Lady Isabel's evasions. Her
religious life had been singularly vivacious, and the scope and
variety of the petitions that she nightly offered caused considerable
embarrassment to her mother. What was any good Church of England, or
Ireland, mamma to do when an infant of four years implores its Deity:

"Make me to have a good, fat, lively conscience, and even if God
curses me, help me not to mind a bit!"

The scandalised mamma decided that extempore prayer must be
discouraged, and seeking out in one of the manuals a form of prayer of
strictly limited range, repressed all additions and emendations.

Obedient to the traditions of her own youth, Lady Isabel, as her
children successively attained the mature age of six years, bestowed
Bibles upon them, but it was Christian, alone of the family, that
applied herself with any diligence to the study of the Scriptures. She
began with the Book of Esther (in which she found a satisfaction that
in after life remained something of a bewilderment to her), and
thence, but this was a year or two later, for no reason that can be
assigned, she passed lightly to the Book of Revelation. With it, it
may be said, the artistic side of her, that had leaped to sympathy