“I must show them to you.  He is really very clever.  We sent him to the School of Art twice a week, and he has got on wonderfully.  I begin to believe in my academician.”

“So you don’t repent?”

“I think not.  As far as I can judge he is a good boy still.  I make him my escort to church, so that I am sure of him there.  Renville would have taken him for a boy about his studio, and I think he will go there eventually; but Camilla thinks he may be an attraction at the bazaar, and is making him draw for it.”

“I was in hopes that the bazaar would have blown over, but the Bishop has been demanding of Fuller and his churchwardens how soon they mean to put the building in hand, and this seems to be their only notion of raising money.”

“I am very glad of this opportunity of asking what you think I had better do about it.  Your wife takes no part in it?”

“Certainly not; but I doubt whether that need be a precedent for you.  I am answerable for her, and you could hardly keep out of it without making a divided household.”

“I see the difference, and perhaps I have made myself quite unpleasant enough already.”

“As the opposition?”

“And Camilla has been very kind in giving me much more freedom than I expected, and pacifying papa.  She let me go every Friday evening to help Lady Susan Strangeways at her mothers’ meeting.”

“Lady Susan Strangeways!  I have heard of her.”

“She has been my comforter and help all this time.  She is all kindness and heartiness,—­elbow-deep in everything good.  She got up at five o’clock to finish the decorations at St. Maurice’s, and to-day she is taking five hundred school-children to Windsor forest.”

“Is she the mother of the young man at Backsworth?”

“Yes,” said Eleonora, in rather a different tone.  “Perhaps she goes rather far; and he has flown into the opposite extreme, though they say he is improving, and has given up the turf, and all that sort of thing.”

“Was he at home?  I heard he was on leave.”

“He was said to be at home, but I hardly ever saw him.  He was always out with his own friends when I was there.”

“I should not suppose Lady Susan’s pursuits were much in his line.  Is not one of the daughters a Sister?”

“Yes, at St. Faith’s.  She was my great friend.  The younger ones are nice girls, but have not much in them.  Camilla is going to have them down for the bazaar.”

“What, do they patronize bazaars?”

“Everything that is doing they patronize.  I have known them be everywhere, from the Drawing-room to a Guild-meeting in a back slum, and all with equal appetite.  That is one reason why I fear I shall not see much of your mother; they are never tired, and I shall never get out alone.  The house is to be full of people, and we are to be very gay.”