Of course, it is impossible to say that a really honest fulfilment of the religious bargain would have diverted the current of events into another channel. All the story points to is that if Challis could have reposed on the bosom of his "docta conjux" with less fear of its bristling suddenly--like the image of the Virgin with which the Inquisition convinced the most sceptical--with suggestions of precept or reproof, even as the blessed image shot out spikes, then there would have been one needless apple of discord the less. And if Marianne had carried out her half of the compact, Titus would certainly have been more scrupulous in saying, before the boy, things of a racy nature on subjects of reverence in the eyes of all Christendom and many thoughtful persons outside it. It wasn't fair to Marianne, who had no sense of humour at all, to develope an old line of critical analysis of the Scriptures for the benefit of Bob; to consider that young man, in fact, as a Bible Class, anxious to discover and record the first mentions of all the trades, all the professions, all the popular complaints delicacy allows to be canvassed in public, all the sports and all the winners, in a volume his mother regarded as sacred. What did it matter how indistinct an idea she had of what she meant by the word _sacred_, or anything else? She might at least have been spared one especial atrocity--the first mention of pugilism. To do him justice, however, Challis was not himself guilty of this triumph of successful research, which we need not record here. It came home from school with Bob next Easter holidays, and Bob teemed and twinkled with it until at last he got the chance of delivering it into his father's ear as he sat astride of his knee, with all the license of a boy just released from the classics. "You young scaramouch! Where do you expect to go to? Don't you go and tell your mother that!" For Challis, in the presence of this youth, kept up a certain parade of potential reverence, available in extreme cases. He could countenance the first mention of Cannibalism--"The woman tempted me, and I did eat." But this one ran near the confines of the unpermissible--overpast them. "Shuttleworth and Graves Minor's going to tell their sisters. Because they'll be in such an awful rage!" "A very low motive. Perhaps you'll be good enough to regulate your conduct on better models than Shuttleworth and Graves Minor." "Their father's a Bishop. At least, Graves Minor's is. He only allows him a shilling a month pocket-money. He's gone to his aunts Jane and Mary's for the holidays because they're infectious...." "Which--the holidays or the aunts? Pay attention to your antecedents, young man!" "Neither. They're infectious at home; they've got scarlet fever. He's awfully glad, because his Aunt Jane lives in a haunted house, and he can get out on the leads. I say, pater!" "What, offspring?"