People said the baronet carried the principle of Example so far that he only retained his boozing dyspeptic brother Hippias at Raynham in order to exhibit to his son the woeful retribution nature wreaked upon a life of indulgence; poor Hippias having now become a walking complaint.  This was unjust, but there is no doubt he made use of every illustration to disgust or encourage his son that his neighbourhood afforded him, and did not spare his brother, for whom Richard entertained a contempt in proportion to his admiration of his father, and was for flying into penitential extremes which Sir Austin had to soften.

The boy prayed with his father morning and night.

“How is it, sir,” he said one night, “I can’t get Tom Bakewell to pray?”

“Does he refuse?” Sir Austin asked.

“He seems to be ashamed to,” Richard replied.  “He wants to know what is the good? and I don’t know what to tell him.”

“I’m afraid it has gone too far with him,” said Sir Austin, “and until he has had some deep sorrows he will not find the divine want of Prayer.  Strive, my son, when you represent the people, to provide for their education.  He feels everything now through a dull impenetrable rind.  Culture is half-way to heaven.  Tell him, my son, should he ever be brought to ask how he may know the efficacy of Prayer, and that his prayer will be answered, tell him (he quoted The Pilgrim’s Scrip): 

“‘Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.’”

“I will, sir,” said Richard, and went to sleep happy.

Happy in his father and in himself, the youth now lived.  Conscience was beginning to inhabit him, and he carried some of the freightage known to men; though in so crude a form that it overweighed him, now on this side, now on that.

The wise youth Adrian observed these further progressionary developments in his pupil, soberly cynical.  He was under Sir Austin’s interdict not to banter him, and eased his acrid humours inspired by the sight of a felonious young rick-burner turning saint, by grave affectations of sympathy and extreme accuracy in marking the not widely-distant dates of his various changes.  The Bread-and-water phase lasted a fortnight:  the Vegetarian (an imitation of his cousin Austin), little better than a month:  the religious, somewhat longer:  the religious-propagandist (when he was for converting the heathen of Lobourne and Burnley, and the domestics of the Abbey, including Tom Bakewell), longer still, and hard to bear;—­he tried to convert Adrian!  All the while Tom was being exercised like a raw recruit.  Richard had a drill-sergeant from the nearest barracks down for him, to give him a proper pride in himself, and marched him to and fro with immense satisfaction, and nearly broke his heart trying to get the round-shouldered rustic to take in the rudiments of letters:  for the boy had unbounded hopes for Tom, as a hero in grain.