turn. If you fear
him it is because you do not love him as he deserves, and I know it
sometimes cuts him to the very heart to think that he has earned from you
a deeper and more willing sympathy than you display towards him. Oh,
Ernest, Ernest, do not grieve one who is so good and noble-hearted by
conduct which I can call by no other name than ingratitude."

Ernest could never stand being spoken to in this way by his mother: for
he still believed that she loved him, and that he was fond of her and had
a friend in her--up to a certain point. But his mother was beginning to
come to the end of her tether; she had played the domestic confidence
trick upon him times without number already. Over and over again had she
wheedled from him all she wanted to know, and afterwards got him into the
most horrible scrape by telling the whole to Theobald. Ernest had
remonstrated more than once upon these occasions, and had pointed out to
his mother how disastrous to him his confidences had been, but Christina
had always joined issue with him and showed him in the clearest possible
manner that in each case she had been right, and that he could not
reasonably complain. Generally it was her conscience that forbade her to
be silent, and against this there was no appeal, for we are all bound to
follow the dictates of our conscience. Ernest used to have to recite a
hymn about conscience. It was to the effect that if you did not pay
attention to its voice it would soon leave off speaking. "My mamma's
conscience has not left off speaking," said Ernest to one of his chums at
Roughborough; "it's always jabbering."

When a boy has once spoken so disrespectfully as this about his mother's
conscience it is practically all over between him and her. Ernest
through sheer force of habit, of the sofa, and of the return of the
associated ideas, was still so moved by the siren's voice as to yearn to
sail towards her, and fling himself into her arms, but it would not do;
there were other associated ideas that returned also, and the mangled
bones of too many murdered confessions were lying whitening round the
skirts of his mother's dress, to allow him by any possibility to trust
her further. So he hung his head and looked sheepish, but kept his own
counsel.

"I see, my dearest," continued his mother, "either that I am mistaken,
and that there is nothing on your mind, or that you will not unburden
yourself to me: but oh, Ernest, tell me at least