I should forgive her now, if she only came back to me.  I’m sometimes so lonely, boy.  I wish you’d marry and settle down here—­there’s lots of room for you—­some nice girl—­and give me grandchildren before I die.  But I suppose I must be patient and wait first for your call to the Bar.  What a dreary long time it all takes!  Why can’t they, with one so clever, shorten the term of probation?  Or why wait for that to marry?  I could give you an allowance.  As soon as you were called you could then follow the South Wales circuit—­well, go on about your Dinosaurs.  I seem to remember Professor Owen invented them—­but he never wavered in his faith and was the great opponent of that rash man, Darwin.  Oh, I remember now the old controversies—­what a stalwart was the Bishop of Winchester!  They couldn’t bear him at their Scientific meetings—­there was one at Bath, if I recollect right, and he put them all to the right-about.  What about your Dinosaurs?  I’m not denying their existence; it’s only the estimates of time that are so ridiculous.  God made them and destroyed them in the great Flood, of which their fossil remains are the evidence—­”

David however would desist from pursuing such futile arguments; feel surprised, indeed, at his own outbreaks, except that he hated insincerity.  However new and disturbing to his father were these flashes of the New Learning, in his outward conduct he was orthodox and extremely well-behaved.  The spiritual exercises of the Revd.  Howel had become jejune, and limited very much by his failing sight.  The recovery after the operation had come too late in life to bring about any expansion of public or private devotions.  Family prayers were reduced to the recital from memory of an exhortation, a confession, and an absolution, followed by the Lord’s Prayer and a benediction.  Services in the church were limited to Morning and Evening prayers, with Communion on the first Sunday in the month, and a sermon following Morning prayer.  There was no one to play the organ if the schoolmistress failed to turn up—­as she often did.  David however scrupulously turned the normal congregation of five—­Bridget, the maid of the time-being, the gardener-groom, the sexton, and a baker-church-warden—­into six by his unvarying attendance.  In the course of half his stay the rumour of his being present and of his good looks and great spiritual improvement attracted quite a considerable congregation, chiefly of young women and a few sheepish youths; so that his father was at one and the same time exhilarated and embarrassed.  Was this to be a Church revival?  If so, he readily pardoned David his theories on the Dinosaurs and his doubts as to the unvarying evidence of Divine Wisdom in the story of Creation.