So far so good, and I was well pleased.  But unfortunately I remembered that it was my duty to testify ’in season and out of season’.  I therefore asked, with much earnestness, ’But, Papa, is she one of the Lord’s children?’ He replied, with gravity, that she was.  ‘Has she taken up her cross in baptism?’ I went on, for this was my own strong point as a believer.  My Father looked a little shame-faced, and replied:  ’Well, she has not as yet seen the necessity of that, but we must pray that the Lord may make her way clear before her.  You see, she has been brought up, hitherto, in the so-called Church of England.’  Our positions were now curiously changed.  It seemed as if it were I who was the jealous monitor, and my Father the deprecating penitent.  I sat up in the coverlid, and I shook a finger at him.  ‘Papa,’ I said, ‘don’t tell me that she’s a pedobaptist?’ I had lately acquired that valuable word, and I seized this remarkable opportunity of using it.  It affected my Father painfully, but he repeated his assurance that if we united our prayers, and set the Scripture plan plainly before Miss Brightwen, there could be no doubt that she would see her way to accepting the doctrine of adult baptism.  And he said we must judge not, lest we ourselves bejudged.  I had just enough tact to let that pass, but I was quite aware that our whole system was one of judging, and that we had no intention whatever of being judged ourselves.  Yet even at the age of eleven one sees that on certain occasions to press home the truth is not convenient.

Just before Christmas, on a piercing night of frost, my Father brought to us his bride.  The smartening up of the house, the new furniture, the removal of my own possessions to a private bedroom, the wedding-gifts of the ‘saints’, all these things paled in interest before the fact that Miss Marks had ’made a scene’, in the course of the afternoon.  I was dancing about the drawing-room, and was saying:  ’Oh!  I am so glad my new Mamma is coming,’ when Miss Marks called out, in an unnatural voice, ’Oh! you cruel child.’  I stopped in amazement and stared at her, whereupon she threw prudence to the winds, and moaned:  ’I once thought I should be your dear mamma.’  I was simply stupefied, and I expressed my horror in terms that were clear and strong.  Thereupon Miss Marks had a wild fit of hysterics, while I looked on, wholly unsympathetic and still deeply affronted.  She was right; I was cruel, alas! but then, what a silly woman she had been!  The consequence was that she withdrew in a moist and quivering condition to her boudoir, where she had locked herself in when I, all smiles and caresses, was welcoming the bride and bridegroom on the doorstep as politely as if I had been a valued old family retainer.

My stepmother immediately became a great ally of mine.  She was never a tower of strength to me, but at least she was always a lodge in my garden of cucumbers.  She was a very well-meaning pious lady, but she was not a fanatic, and her mind did not naturally revel in spiritual aspirations.  Almost her only social fault was that she was sometimes a little fretful; this was the way in which her bruised individuality asserted itself.  But she was affectionate, serene, and above all refined.  Her refinement was extraordinarily pleasant to my nerves, on which much else in our surroundings jarred.