Ernest now wrote home a letter couched in a vein different from his ordinary ones.  His letters were usually all common form and padding, for as I have already explained, if he wrote about anything that really interested him, his mother always wanted to know more and more about it—­every fresh answer being as the lopping off of a hydra’s head and giving birth to half a dozen or more new questions—­but in the end it came invariably to the same result, namely, that he ought to have done something else, or ought not to go on doing as he proposed.  Now, however, there was a new departure, and for the thousandth time he concluded that he was about to take a course of which his father and mother would approve, and in which they would be interested, so that at last he and they might get on more sympathetically than heretofore.  He therefore wrote a gushing impulsive letter, which afforded much amusement to myself as I read it, but which is too long for reproduction.  One passage ran:  “I am now going towards Christ; the greater number of my college friends are, I fear, going away from Him; we must pray for them that they may find the peace that is in Christ even as I have myself found it.”  Ernest covered his face with his hands for shame as he read this extract from the bundle of letters he had put into my hands—­they had been returned to him by his father on his mother’s death, his mother having carefully preserved them.

“Shall I cut it out?” said I, “I will if you like.”

“Certainly not,” he answered, “and if good-natured friends have kept more records of my follies, pick out any plums that may amuse the reader, and let him have his laugh over them.”  But fancy what effect a letter like this—­so unled up to—­must have produced at Battersby!  Even Christina refrained from ecstasy over her son’s having discovered the power of Christ’s word, while Theobald was frightened out of his wits.  It was well his son was not going to have any doubts or difficulties, and that he would be ordained without making a fuss over it, but he smelt mischief in this sudden conversion of one who had never yet shown any inclination towards religion.  He hated people who did not know where to stop.  Ernest was always so outre and strange; there was never any knowing what he would do next, except that it would be something unusual and silly.  If he was to get the bit between his teeth after he had got ordained and bought his living, he would play more pranks than ever he, Theobald, had done.  The fact, doubtless, of his being ordained and having bought a living would go a long way to steady him, and if he married, his wife must see to the rest; this was his only chance and, to do justice to his sagacity, Theobald in his heart did not think very highly of it.