If his mother felt regretful for the change, she was far too wise to show it. Indeed, it is quite likely that she felt no regrets at all. By the time that Scott came to his 'teens, Mrs. Brenton was doing her level and conscientious best to conceal from him the demoralizing fact of her belief that he could do almost no wrong, and she clung to the modifying _almost_ with a passionate fervour born of her clerical ancestry and her consequent belief in the inherent viciousness of unconverted man. Moreover, her inherited notions of conversion included spiritual writhings and physical night-sweats and penitential tears by way of its accomplishment. According to the creed of all the Parson Wheelers since the Puritan migration, one became a Christian rather violently, and not by leisurely unfolding. It had been to her the greatest of all reliefs since the unconfessed one born of her husband's premature removal, when the young Walter Scott had got himself converted by means of an itinerant revivalist. From that time on, her gaze had been fixed unfalteringly upon the hour when he should assume the mantle of his clerical grandparents; and she inclined to look upon his other talents as being so many manifestations of diabolic ingenuity. And now, these Christmas holidays, the diabolism seemed to her to be rampant; it effervesced through all Scott's being like the mysterious things he brewed within his test-tubes. Not that Mrs. Brenton would have known a test-tube by sight, however. She only had gleaned from her son's talk the fact that they existed and held fizzy compounds which would kill you, if you drank them. Perhaps her analogy was all the better for her lack of specific knowledge. In any case, she saw and feared the effervescence. The sausages and the white bowl of hot fat gravy were so much carefully considered bait to lure her son back into the paths of orthodox uprightness. While they were being swallowed--slowly, by reason of their mussiness--she had certain things she wished to say to him. To her extreme surprise, Scott said them first to her. "Mother," he said, a little bit imperiously considering his age; "no matter now about Catie. I want to talk to you about--" "About?" she queried nervously, while he hesitated under what obviously was a pretext of picking out the brownest sausage. "About--myself." Her nervousness increased. "Take some more gravy, Scott," she urged him hurriedly. "You'd better dip it on your bread as soon as you can; it gets cold so soon, these winter mornings." But he ignored the spoon she offered him. When he spoke, it was with a curious hesitation. "Mother, did I tell you what Professor Mansfield said?" "Yes." "Weren't you glad--just a very little?" His tone was boyish in its pleading. Mrs. Brenton's answer was evasive. "Of course, Scott. I am always glad, when your teachers speak well of you," she said.