How he loathed and dreaded the idea of Dearest being an Angel!  Fancy sweet Dearest or his own darling Lucille with silly wings (like a beastly goose or turkey in dear old Cook’s larder), with a long trumpet, perhaps, in a kind of night-gown, flying about the place, it wasn’t decent at all—­Dearest and Lucille, whom he adored and hugged—­unsympathetic, cold, superior, unhuggable, haughty; and the boy who was very, very tender-hearted, would throw his arms round Dearest’s neck and hug and hug and hug, for he abhorred the thought of her becoming a beastly angel.

Surely, if God knew His business, Dearest would be always happy and bright and live ever so long, and be ever so old, forty years and more.

And Dearest, fearing that her idolized boy might grow up a man like—­well, like “Grumper” had been—­hard, quarrelsome, adventurous, flippant, wicked, pleasure-loving, drunken, Godless ... redoubled her efforts to Influence-the-child’s-mind-for-good by means of the Testaments and Theology, the Covenant, the Deluge, Miracles, the Immaculate Conception, the Last Supper, the Resurrection, Pentecost, Creeds, Collects, Prayers.

And the boy’s mind weighed these things deliberately, pondered them, revolted—­and rejected them one and all.

Dearest had been taken in....

He said the prayers she taught him mechanically, and when he felt the need of real prayer—­(as he did when he had dreamed of the Snake)—­he always began, “If you are there, God, and are a good, kind God” ... and concluded, “Yours sincerely, Damocles de Warrenne”.

He got but little comfort, however, for his restless and logical mind asked:—­

“If God knows best and will surely do what is best, why bother Him?  And if He does not and will not, why bother yourself?”

But Dearest succeeded, at any rate, in filling his young soul with a love of beauty, romance, high adventure, honour, and all physical, mental, and moral cleanliness.

She taught him to use his imagination, and she made books a necessity.  She made him a gentleman in soul—­as distinct from a gentleman in clothes, pocket, or position.

She gave him a beautiful veneration for woman that no other woman was capable of destroying—­though one or two did their best.  Then the sad-eyed lady was superseded and her professional successor, Miss Smellie, the governess, finding the boy loved the Sword, asked Grumper to lock it away for the boy’s Good.

Also she got Grumper to dismiss Nurse Beaton for impudence and not “knowing her place”.

But Damocles entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with Lucille, on whom he lavished the whole affection of his deeply, if undemonstratively, affectionate nature, and the two “hunted in couples,” sinned and suffered together, pooled their resources and their wits, found consolation in each other when harried by Miss Smellie, spent every available moment in each other’s society and, like the Early Christians, had all things in common.