Then he began to go to the classes which were held in the headmaster’s study, immediately after tea, to prepare boys for confirmation.  Philip’s piety had not stood the test of time, and he had long since given up his nightly reading of the Bible; but now, under the influence of Mr. Perkins, with this new condition of the body which made him so restless, his old feelings revived, and he reproached himself bitterly for his backsliding.  The fires of Hell burned fiercely before his mind’s eye.  If he had died during that time when he was little better than an infidel he would have been lost; he believed implicitly in pain everlasting, he believed in it much more than in eternal happiness; and he shuddered at the dangers he had run.

Since the day on which Mr. Perkins had spoken kindly to him, when he was smarting under the particular form of abuse which he could least bear, Philip had conceived for his headmaster a dog-like adoration.  He racked his brains vainly for some way to please him.  He treasured the smallest word of commendation which by chance fell from his lips.  And when he came to the quiet little meetings in his house he was prepared to surrender himself entirely.  He kept his eyes fixed on Mr. Perkins’ shining eyes, and sat with mouth half open, his head a little thrown forward so as to miss no word.  The ordinariness of the surroundings made the matters they dealt with extraordinarily moving.  And often the master, seized himself by the wonder of his subject, would push back the book in front of him, and with his hands clasped together over his heart, as though to still the beating, would talk of the mysteries of their religion.  Sometimes Philip did not understand, but he did not want to understand, he felt vaguely that it was enough to feel.  It seemed to him then that the headmaster, with his black, straggling hair and his pale face, was like those prophets of Israel who feared not to take kings to task; and when he thought of the Redeemer he saw Him only with the same dark eyes and those wan cheeks.

Mr. Perkins took this part of his work with great seriousness.  There was never here any of that flashing humour which made the other masters suspect him of flippancy.  Finding time for everything in his busy day, he was able at certain intervals to take separately for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes the boys whom he was preparing for confirmation.  He wanted to make them feel that this was the first consciously serious step in their lives; he tried to grope into the depths of their souls; he wanted to instil in them his own vehement devotion.  In Philip, notwithstanding his shyness, he felt the possibility of a passion equal to his own.  The boy’s temperament seemed to him essentially religious.  One day he broke off suddenly from the subject on which he had been talking.

“Have you thought at all what you’re going to be when you grow up?” he asked.

“My uncle wants me to be ordained,” said Philip.