She even recurred to her question, whether Julius was a Christian, without nearly as much negation in her tones as before; and Jenny, taking it as it was meant, vouched for his piety, so as might render it a little more comprehensible to one matured on Scottish Calvinism and English Methodism, diluted in devout undogmatic minds, with no principle more developed than horror of Popery and of worldliness. Turned loose in solitude, reserve, and sadness, on her husband's family, who did nothing but shock her with manifestations of the latter, she could hardly turn even to the clerical portion of it, while Julius, as well as his curates, bore all the tokens by which she had been taught to know a Papist. Daily intercourse was perhaps drawing her a little towards her brother-in-law; but Herbert Bowater united these obnoxious externals to a careless tongue, and joyous easy-going manner, and taste for amusement, which so horrified Anne, that she once condoled with his sister, and proposed to unite in prayer for his conversion; but this was more than Joanna could bear, and she cried, "I only wish I were as good a Christian as dear Herbert!" For indeed, the sister's heart intensely esteemed his sweetness, honesty, and simplicity, even while she found it an uphill task to coax him to steady work. After that first morning he was indeed ashamed to let her see the proportion between his pastoral visits and his theological reading; but the newspapers (he had two or three weekly ones) had a curious facility of expansion, and there was a perilous sound in "I'll just see where the meet is,"--not that he had the most distant idea of repairing thither; it was pure filial interest in learning where his father and Edith would be. Jenny could not tell whether her presence conduced to diligence or to chatter, but he minded her more than any one else, and always stuck close to her, insisting on her admiring all his proteges. There was one with whom he was certainly doing a work, which, as Julius truly said, no one more clerical could have done so well-- namely, the son of his landlady, a youth who held a small clerkship in an office at Willansborough, and who had fallen this year under the attraction of the Backsworth races, so as to get into serious difficulties with his master, and narrowly escape dismissal for the sake of his mother. The exceeding good-nature and muscular Christian side of the lodger's character was having a most happy effect on the lad. He had set up a regular hero-worship, which Herbert encouraged by always calling for him when going to the choral practices, getting him into the choir, lending him books, and inviting him to read in his room in the evening. How much they played with the dogs was not known; but at any rate, Harry Hornblower was out of mischief, and his mother was so grateful to Mr. Bowater, that she even went the length of preferring his sermons to those of both his seniors.