Mark would stand gravely to attention while Mabel Williams’ toilet was adjusted, and as gravely follow the shrill raucous procession to watch pavement games like Hop Scotch or to help in gathering together enough sickly greenery from the site of the new church to make the summer grotto, which in Lima Street was a labour of love, since few of the passers by in that neighbourhood could afford to remember St. James’ grotto with a careless penny.

The fact that all the other little boys and girls called the Missioner Father made it hard for Mark to understand his own more particular relationship to him, and Lidderdale was so much afraid of showing any more affection to one child of his flock than to another that he was less genial with his own son than with any of the other children.  It was natural that in these circumstances Mark should be even more dependent than most solitary children upon his mother, and no doubt it was through his passion to gratify her that he managed to avoid that Cockney accent.  His father wanted his first religious instruction to be of the communal kind that he provided in the Sunday School.  One might have thought that he distrusted his wife’s orthodoxy, so strongly did he disapprove of her teaching Mark by himself in the nursery.

“It’s the curse of the day,” he used to assert, “this pampering of children with an individual religion.  They get into the habit of thinking God is their special property and when they get older and find he isn’t, as often as not they give up religion altogether, because it doesn’t happen to fit in with the spoilt notions they got hold of as infants.”

Mark’s bringing up was the only thing in which Mrs. Lidderdale did not give way to her husband.  She was determined that he should not have a Cockney accent, and without irritating her husband any more than was inevitable she was determined that he should not gobble down his religion as a solid indigestible whole.  On this point she even went so far as directly to contradict the boy’s father and argue that an intelligent boy like Mark was likely to vomit up such an indigestible whole later on, although she did not make use of such a coarse expression.

“All mothers think their sons are the cleverest in the world.”

“But, James, he is an exceptionally clever little boy.  Most observant, with a splendid memory and plenty of imagination.”

“Too much imagination.  His nights are one long circus.”

“But, James, you yourself have insisted so often on the personal Devil; you can’t expect a little boy of Mark’s sensitiveness not to be impressed by your picture.”

“He has nothing to fear from the Devil, if he behaves himself.  Haven’t I made that clear?”

Mrs. Lidderdale sighed.

“But, James dear, a child’s mind is so literal, and though I know you insist just as much on the reality of the Saints and Angels, a child’s mind is always most impressed by the things that have power to frighten it.”