Helen Raymount was now a little woman of fifty, clothed in a sweet dignity with plentiful gray hair and great, clear, dark eyes. She had the two daughters and two sons already introduced, of whom Hester was the eldest.

Wise as was the mother, and far-seeing as was the father, they had made the mistake common to many parents of putting off teaching their children obedience until it was more or less too late. If this is not begun at the first possible moment, it will be harder every hour it is postponed. The spiritual loss and injury caused to the child by their waiting till they fancy him fit to reason with is immense. Yet there is nothing in which parents are more stupid and cowardly, and even stubborn, than this. A home where children, even of parents of good conscience, are humoured and scolded and coaxed and punished instead of being taught obedience is like a moral slaughterhouse instead of the training ground it was meant to be.

The dawn of reason will no doubt help to develop obedience, but obedience is even more necessary to the development of reason. To require of a child only what that child can understand is simply to help him to make himself his own god—that is a devil. That some seem so little injured for their bad training is no justification for their parents’ foolishness.

Cornelius was a youth of good abilities and a few good qualities. Naturally kind-hearted, he was full of self. He was not incapable of generosity, and was even tempted occasionally toward kindness. But he did not care whom he hurt as long as he did not see their suffering. He was incapable of controlling himself, yet was full of weak indignation whenever control was placed upon him. Supremely conceited, his view of the essentials of life were a good carriage, good manners, self-confidence, and plenty of money to spend freely. In his foolish brain he had fashioned a god into the likeness of what he considered a gentleman—and it was this image he was trying to become. To any wisdom in his father and mother he was so far blind that he even looked down upon it. Their opinion was hardly to be compared with that of one Reginald Vavasor, who, though so poor as to be one of his fellow clerks, was heir apparent to an earldom.

Leaving his mother, Cornelius took refuge in his room. Although he had occupied it but two weeks, the top of its chest was covered with cheap novels—the only literature he cared for. He read largely of these, if indeed his mode of swallowing could be called reading. But though he had read them all, he was too lazy to face the wind and rain between him and the nearest bookshop. None of his father’s books interested him, whether science, philosophy, history, or poetry. A drearier soul in a drearier setting could hardly be imagined than the soul of this youth in that day’s weather at Burcliff.