What are you doing out of doors this time of the night?" she asked,
but without quite her usual arrogance, for, although she tried to put
it on, her voice trembled too much.

I retorted the question.

"What were you doing out yourself?" I said.

"Looking after you, of course."

"That's why you locked the door, I suppose--to keep me out."

She had no answer ready, but looked as if she would have struck me.

"I shall let your father know of your goings on," she said, recovering
herself a little.

"You need not take the trouble. I shall tell him myself at breakfast
to-morrow morning. I have nothing to hide. You had better tell him
too."

I said this not that I did not believe she had been out to look for
me, but because I thought she had locked the door to annoy me, and I
wanted to take my revenge in rudeness. For doors were seldom locked in
the summer nights in that part of the country. She made me no reply,
but turned and left me, not even shutting the door. I closed it, and
went to bed weary enough.

CHAPTER XXV

Turkey Plots

The next day, at breakfast, I told my father all the previous day's
adventures. Never since he had so kindly rescued me from the misery of
wickedness had I concealed anything from him. He, on his part, while
he gave us every freedom, expected us to speak frankly concerning our
doings. To have been unwilling to let him know any of our proceedings
would have simply argued that they were already disapproved of by
ourselves, and no second instance of this had yet occurred with me.
Hence it came that still as I grew older I seemed to come nearer to my
father. He was to us like a wiser and more beautiful self over us,--a
more enlightened conscience, as it were, ever lifting us up towards
its own higher level.

This was Sunday; but he was not so strict in his ideas concerning the
day as most of his parishioners. So long as we were sedate and
orderly, and neither talked nor laughed too loud, he seldom interfered
with our behaviour, or sought to alter the current of our
conversation. I believe he did not, like some people, require or
expect us to care about religious things as much as he did: we could
not yet know as he did what they really were. But when any of the
doings of the week were referred to on the Sunday, he was more strict,
I think, than on other days, in bringing them, if they involved the
smallest question, to the standard of right, to be judged, and
approved or condem