“I’ll have to go up to the house and say that I can’t come,” I told him after breakfast. He had risen from the table and was in the act of taking down our Bibles from the book-shelf, preparatory to “worship”――a function which took place every morning and evening, and which consisted in my reading aloud a chapter from the Bible, and in my father making a prayer. Sometimes he commented on what I read, explained a verse, drew a lesson from it――interruptions I secretly resented, as they tended to prolong “worship”――sometimes he listened in silence. He put my Bible down beside my tea-cup before replying. Then, when he had resumed his seat, and fumbled with his spectacle-case, he said, “You may go with them: I have been thinking it over.” I answered nothing, though I had a sort of uncomfortable feeling that thanks might possibly be expected. I wondered what would happen if I were to say I didn’t want to go, that I should never go again, that I would rather stay here with him quite alone, free from all “worldly temptations.” It was really the most perfect opportunity imaginable for a thoroughly sentimental scene, like those in the stories he used to read to me. I pictured how it would be wrung out to the last drop of sloppiness, and be promptly followed by my conversion, or even death-bed. “I think it is the ninth chapter of Isaiah,” my father said, interrupting these meditations. “I read the ninth yesterday,” I replied. “It’s the tenth.” My father turned another page, and I began: “‘Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees――’” I felt my cheeks grow red, because the verse seemed to me so extraordinarily apt to the decree about my not going to Derryaghy. I did not look at my father, but keeping my eyes glued to the page went on. The rest of the chapter, however, was less pertinent. “‘He is come to Aiath, he is passed to Migron; at Michmash he hath laid up his carriages: ‘They are gone over the passage: they have taken up their lodging at Geba; Ramah is afraid; Gibeah of Saul is fled. ‘Lift up thy voice, O daughter of Gallim; cause it to be heard unto Laish, O poor Anathoth. ‘Madmenah is removed; the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee,’” etc., etc. It was not wildly exciting in itself, and I cannot say my reading of it made it more so. The only good point about it was that it did not lend itself to exegesis. The kind of thing my father liked was, “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters.” Then he would interrupt me to say, “That means, when their masters tell them to do what is right. If we are told to do something we know to be wrong, we must refuse to obey.”