mortals, and the position of the young parson in these days of
increased parsonic pretensions was, to Mrs. Elsmere, a position in
which there was an inherent risk of absurdity. She wished her son
to impose upon her when it came to his taking any serious step in
life. She asked for nothing better, indeed, than to be able, when
the time came, to bow the motherly knee to him in homage, and she
felt a little dread lest, in her flat moments, a clerical son might
sometimes rouse in her that sharp sense of the ludicrous which is
the enemy of all happy illusions.

Still, of course, the Elsmere proposal was one to be seriously
considered in its due time and place. Mrs. Elsmere only reflected
that it would certainly be better to Say nothing of it to Robert
until he should be at college. His impressionable temperament, and
the power he had occasionally shown of absorbing himself in a subject
till it produced in him a fit of intense continuous brooding,
unfavorable to health and nervous energy, all warned her not to
supply him, at a period of rapid mental and bodily growth, with any
fresh stimulus to the sense of responsibility. As a boy he had
always shown himself religiously susceptible to a certain extent,
and his mother's religious likes and dislikes had invariably found
in him a blind and chivalrous support. He was content to be with
her, to worship with her, and to feel that no reluctance or resistance
divided his heart from hers. But there had been nothing specially
noteworthy or precocious about his religious development, and at
sixteen or seventeen, in spite of his affectionate compliance, and
his natural reverence for all persons and beliefs in authority, his
mother was perfectly aware that many other things in his life were
more real to him than religion. And on this point, at any rate,
she was certainly not the person to force him.