Now, had I consulted Janet, I believe the course of my history would have been different, for she would not then, I may imagine, have been guilty of her fatal slip of the tongue that threw us into heavy seas when we thought ourselves floating on canal waters.  A canal barge (an image to me of the most perfect attainable peace), suddenly, on its passage through our long fir-woods, with their scented reeds and flowing rushes, wild balsam and silky cotton-grass beds, sluiced out to sea and storm, would be somewhat in my likeness soon after a single luckless observation had passed at our Riversley breakfast-table one Sunday morning.

My aunt Dorothy and Mr. Peterborough were conversing upon the varieties of Christian sects, and particularly such as approached nearest to Anglicanism, together with the strange, saddening fact that the Christian religion appeared to be more divided than, Peterborough regretted to say, the forms of idolatry established by the Buddha, Mahomet, and other impostors.  He claimed the audacious merit for us, that we did not discard the reason of man we admitted man’s finite reason to our school of faith, and it was found refractory.  Hence our many divisions.

‘The Roman Catholics admit reason?’ said Janet, who had too strong a turn for showing her keenness in little encounters with Peterborough.

‘No,’ said he; ‘the Protestants.’  And, anxious to elude her, he pressed on to enchain my aunt Dorothy’s attention.  Janet plagued him meanwhile; and I helped her.  We ran him and his schoolboy, the finite refractory, up and down, until Peterborough was glad to abandon him, and Janet said, ‘Did you preach to the Germans much?’ He had officiated in Prince Ernest’s private chapel:  not, he added in his egregious modesty, not that he personally wished to officiate.

‘It was Harry’s wish?’ Janet said, smiling.

‘My post of tutor,’ Peterborough hastened to explain, ’was almost entirely supernumerary.  The circumstances being so, I the more readily acquiesced in the title of private chaplain, prepared to fulfil such duties as devolved upon me in that capacity, and acting thereon I proffered my occasional services.  Lutheranism and Anglicanism are not, doubtless you are aware, divided on the broader bases.  We are common Protestants.  The Papacy, I can assure you, finds as little favour with one as with the other.  Yes, I held forth, as you would say, from time to time.  My assumption of the title of private chaplain, it was thought, improved the family dignity—­that is, on our side.’

‘Thought by Harry?’ said Janet; and my aunt Dorothy said, ’You and Harry had a consultation about it?’

‘Wanted to appear as grand as they could,’ quoth the squire.

Peterborough signified an assent, designed to modify the implication.  ‘Not beyond due bounds, I trust, sir.’

‘Oh! now I understand,’ Janet broke out in the falsetto notes of a puzzle solved in the mind.  ’It was his father!  Harry proclaiming his private chaplain!’