Mrs. Worboise did not reply to this question, which she always treated as irrelevant. Mr. Simon then shook hands with Thomas, who looked on him with a respect inherited from his mother. "Any signs of good in your class, Mr. Thomas?" he asked. The question half irritated Tom. Why, he could not have explained even to himself. The fact was that he had begun to enter upon another phase of experience since he saw the curate last, and the Sunday-school was just a little distasteful to him at the moment. "No," he answered, with a certain slightest motion of the head that might have been interpreted either as of weariness or of indifference. The clergyman interpreted it as of the latter, and proceeded to justify his question, addressing his words to the mother. "Your son thinks me too anxious about the fruits of his labor, Mrs. Worboise. But when we think of the briefness of life, and how soon the night comes when no man can work, I do not think we can be too earnest to win souls for our crown of rejoicing when He comes with the holy angels. First our own souls, Mr. Thomas, and then the souls of others." Thomas, believing every word that the curate said, made notwithstanding no reply, and the curate went on. "There are so many souls that might be saved, if one were only in earnest, and so few years to do it in. We do not strive with God in prayer, Mrs. Worboise. We faint and cease from our prayers and our endeavors together." "That is too true," responded the lady. "I try to do my best," said Thomas, in a tone of apology, and with a lingering doubt in his mind whether he was really speaking the absolute truth. But he comforted himself with saying to himself, "I only said 'I try to do my best;' I did not say, 'I try my best to do my best.'" "I have no reason to doubt it, my young friend," returned the curate, who was not ten years older than his young friend. "I only fancied--no doubt it was but the foolish fancy of my own anxiety--that you did not respond quite so heartily as usual to my remark." The mother's eyes were anxiously fixed on her son during the conversation, for her instincts told her that he was not quite at his ease. She had never given him any scope, never trusted him, or trained him to freedom; but, herself a prisoner to her drawing-room and bed-room, sought with all her energy and contrivance, for which she had plenty of leisure, to keep, strengthen, and repair the invisible cable by which she seemed to herself to hold, and in fact did hold, him, even when he was out of her sight, and himself least aware of the fact. As yet again Thomas made no reply, Mr. Simon changed the subject. "Have you much pain to-night, Mrs. Worboise?" he asked. "I can bear it," she answered. "It will not last forever."