This bleating piece of Platonism came to an end somehow, and I grew to be able to contemplate Mrs. Carter’s back swaying to her pedal-playing without emotion. But I think that this warm soft Cornish climate must have brought out a sort of measles of sentimentality in me, for without pause I transferred my sloppy heart to the curate at Kenwyn, the Rev. J. A. Reeve, who subsequently was appointed Rector of Lambeth by my father, and was an intimate friend of all of us. He was a man who was habitually surrounded by an atmosphere of ecstasy, an adorer of children, and next door to a fanatic in matters of religion, beloved and blissful, living in a light that never was on sea or land. To the outward view he presented a long lean figure, walking at a tremendous pace, and perspiring profusely, with his umbrella tucked under his arm, and his hands clasped in perpetual admiration of this inimitable world, and the saints that he constantly discovered in it under the most deceptive of disguises. There were no “miserable sinners” in his sight; the most impenitent were but rather wilful children of the Father. He had a mane of yellow hair which he tossed back as he laughed peals of uproarious appreciation of any joke at all. But whereas with the chorister and Mrs. Carter there certainly was some personal, physical attraction (though no doubt the main source of the inspiration was music), with Mr. Reeve there was no personal attraction of any kind, and the experience was of the stained-glass window order, in which I was cast for the stained-glass window, and Mr. Reeve for the worshipper. At the bottom of it all perhaps there was some grain of genuine religious sentiment, but this was so largely diluted by mawkishness and vanity, that examination fails to find more than that minute presence described in the analysis of medicinal waters as “some traces.” He used to breakfast with us after a short service in Kenwyn Church at a quarter to eight every morning, to which we children were encouraged though not obliged to go, and he was a kind of unofficial chaplain to my father, writing his letters for him half the morning with a puckered brow, but ready to burst into peals of laughter on the smallest opportunity for mirth. Every Sunday also, he came to tea before service, and afterwards to supper, and every Sunday evening after tea I went with him into a spare bedroom where, with his arm round my neck, he read me the sermon he was about to preach. I suppose my comments were very edifying and satisfactory, for he certainly told my mother that “that boy was not far from the kingdom of God.” She must very wisely have begged him not to tell me that, for I had no idea of it at the time. Once, indeed, he sadly failed me, for meeting me as I was being taken to the dentist by Beth, there to have two teeth out under gas, he said that to have gas was the same as getting drunk, and I went on my weary way feeling not only terrified but wicked as well.