caressing.

My mother smiled.

"Ay, Madam, you may smile; but I and my Lord Dorset were the best
scholars of the age; you shall read my play."

"Do, Mother," said I, "read the play. Shall I tell her some of the jests
in it, Uncle?"

My mother shook her head in anticipative horror, and raised her finger
reprovingly. My uncle said nothing, but winked at me; I understood
the signal, and was about to begin, when the door opened, and the Abbe
Montreuil entered. My uncle released his right leg, and my jest was
cut off. Nobody ever inspired a more dim, religious awe than the
Abbe Montreuil. The priest entered with a smile. My mother hailed the
entrance of an ally.

"Father," said she, rising, "I have just represented to my good
brother the necessity of sending my sons to school; he has proposed an
alternative which I will leave you to discuss with him."

"And what is it?" said Montreuil, sliding into a chair, and patting
Gerald's head with a benignant air.

"To educate them himself," answered my mother, with a sort of satirical
gravity. My uncle moved uneasily in his seat, as if, for the first time,
he saw something ridiculous in the proposal.

The smile, immediately fading from the thin lips of the priest, gave way
to an expression of respectful approbation. "An admirable plan," said
he slowly, "but liable to some little exceptions, which Sir William will
allow me to point out."

My mother called to us, and we left the room with her. The next time we
saw my uncle, the priest's reasonings had prevailed. The following week
we all three went to school. My father had been a Catholic, my mother
was of the same creed, and consequently we were brought up in that
unpopular faith. But my uncle, whose religion had been sadly undermined
at court, was a terrible caviller at the holy mysteries of Catholicism;
and while his friends termed him a Protestant, his enemies hinted,
falsely enough, that he was a sceptic. When Montreuil first followed us
to Devereux Court, many and bitter were the little jests my worthy
uncle had provided for his reception; and he would shake his head with
a notable archness whenever he heard our reverential description of the
expected guest. But, somehow or other, no sooner had he seen the priest
than all his proposed railleries deserted him. Not a single witticism
came to his assistance, and the calm, smooth face of the ecclesiastic
seemed to operate upon the fierce resolves of the facetious knight i