The most afflictive thing about these encounters was his constant failure to score a victory; only once, in the affair of the pocket-money already narrated, had he succeeded in holding his own. Perhaps it was all for the good of his soul; for in matters of finance his sense of probity remained in after years somewhat defective; victory over Davidina in that respect had apparently done him no good. But in other directions she continued to do her best to save his soul; and though he was now committed to the ministry, and was himself to become a soul-saving apparatus, he did not like her way of doing it; temperamentally (and was there ever a character more largely composed of temperament?) he would much rather have gone his own way and been damned, than saved by Davidina on the lines she chose. She stung him like a gad-fly in his weakest spots, till the unerring accuracy of her aim filled him with a superstitious dread; and though never once uttered in words, ‘Thou, Davidina, seest me,’ was the motive force which thus early drove him so deeply and deviously into subterfuge that it became an infection of his blood. And though against her it availed little, in other directions, pricked to it by her incessant skill, he had a quite phenomenal success, and was--up to a point--the nimblest being that ever skipped from cover to open and from open to cover, till, in the development of speed, he ceased to distinguish which was which; and what he told would tell with the most complete conviction that, if it told to his advantage, it must be truth; and then, on occasion, would avail himself of the truth to such dazzling effect that, lost in the blaze of his rectitude, he forgot those other occasions when he had been truer to himself. Of Davidina’s inspired pin-pricks here is an example, notable for the early date of its delivery, when they were at the respective ages of twelve and eleven. Brother and sister had fallen out in guessing at an event as to which with probability all the other way, Davidina proved to be right. Not believing this to be a guess, ‘You _knew_!’ he cried indignantly. ‘I didn’t,’ she replied smoothly, ‘I only knew better.’ This was superfluous: it enabled Mr. Trimblerigg to get in with a retort. ‘Even very conceited people,’ he said, ‘do sometimes manage to guess right.’ Davidina recovered her ground. ‘I’m not as conceited as you,’ she replied, ‘I never think myself good.’ It was the sticking-out of her tongue, and adding ‘so there’! which gave the barb to those words.