Hide and Seek

'Where is Zack?' asked Mrs. Thorpe, glancing quickly and nervously all round her.

'He is locked up in my dressing-room,' answered her husband without taking his eyes off the book.

'In your dressing-room!' echoed Mrs. Thorpe, looking as startled and horrified as if she had received a blow instead of an answer; 'in your dressing-room! Good heavens, Zachary! how do you know the child hasn't got at your razors?'

'They are locked up,' rejoined Mr. Thorpe, with the mildest reproof in his voice, and the mournfullest self- possession in his manner. 'I took care before I left the boy, that he should get at nothing which could do him any injury. He is locked up, and will remain locked up, because'—

'I say, Thorpe! won't you let him off this time?' interrupted Mr. Goodworth, boldly plunging head foremost, with his petition for mercy, into the conversation.

'If you had allowed me to proceed, sir,' said Mr. Thorpe, who always called his father-in-law Sir, 'I should have simply remarked that, after having enlarged to my son (in such terms, you will observe, as I thought best fitted to his comprehension) on the disgrace to his parents and himself of his behavior this morning, I set him as a task three verses to learn out of the 'Select Bible Texts for Children;' choosing the verses which seemed most likely, if I may trust my own judgment on the point, to impress on him what his behavior ought to be for the future in church. He flatly refused to learn what I told him. It was, of course, quite impossible to allow my authority to be set at defiance by my own child (whose disobedient disposition has always, God knows, been a source of constant trouble and anxiety to me); so I locked him up, and locked up he will remain until he has obeyed me. My dear,' (turning to his wife and handing her a key), 'I have no objection, if you wish, to your going and trying what you can do towards overcoming the obstinacy of this unhappy child.'

Mrs. Thorpe took the key, and went up stairs immediately—went up to do what all women have done, from the time of the first mother; to do what Eve did when Cain was wayward in his infancy, and cried at her breast—in short, went up to coax her child.

Mr. Thorpe, when his wife closed the door, carefully looked down the open page on his knee for the place where he had left off—found it—referred back a moment to the last lines of the preceding leaf—and then went on with his book, not taking the smallest notice of Mr. Goodworth.

'Thorpe!' cried the old gentleman, plunging head-foremost again, into his son-in-law's reading this time instead of his talk, 'You may say what you please; but your notion of bringing up Zack is a wrong one altogether.'

With the calmest imaginable expression of face, Mr. Thorpe looked up from his book; and, first carefully putting a paper-knife between the leaves, placed it on the table. He then crossed one of his legs over the other, rested an elbow on each arm of his chair, and clasped his hands in front of him. On the wall opposite hung several lithographed portraits of distinguished preachers, in and out of the Establishment—mostly represented as very sturdily-constructed men with bristly hair, fronting the spectator interrogatively and holding thick books in their hands. Upon one of these portraits—the name of the original of which was stated at the foot of the print to be the Reverend Aaron Yollop—Mr. Thorpe now fixed his eyes, with a faint approach to a smile on his face (he never was known to laugh), and with a look and manner which said as plainly as if he had spoken it: 'This old man is about to say something improper or absurd to me; but he is my wife's father, it is my duty to bear with him, and therefore I am perfectly resigned.'

'It's no use looking in that way, Thorpe,' growled the old gentleman; 'I'm not to be put down by looks at my time of life. I may have my own opinions I suppose, like other people; and I don't see why I shouldn't express them, especially when they relate to my own daughter's boy. It's very unreasonable of me, I dare say, but I think I ought to have a voice now and then in Zack's bringing up.'

Mr. Thorpe bowed respectfully—partly to Mr. Goodworth, partly to the Reverend Aaron Yollop. 'I shall always be happy, sir, to listen to any expression of your opinion—'

'My opinion's this,' burst out Mr. Goodworth. 'You've no business to take Zack to church at all, till he's some years older than he is now. I don't deny that there may be a few children, here and there, at six years old, who are so very patient, and so very—(what's the word for a child that knows a deal more than he has any business to know at his age? Stop! I've got it!—precocious—that's the word)—so very patient and so very precocious that they will sit quiet in the same place for two hours; making believe all the time that they understand every word of the service, whether they really do or not. I don't deny that there may be such children, though I never met with them myself, and should think them all impudent little hypocrites if I did! But Zack isn't one of that sort: Zack's a genuine child (God bless him)! Zack—'

'Do I understand you, my dear sir,' interposed Mr. Thorpe, sorrowfully sarcastic, 'to be praising the conduct of my son in disturbing the congregation, and obliging me to take him out of church?'

'Nothing of the sort,' retorted the old gentleman; 'I'm not praising Zack's conduct, but I am blaming yours. Here it is in plain words:—You keep on cramming church down his throat; and he keeps on puking at it as if it was physic, because he don't know any better, and can't know any better at his age. Is that the way to make him take kindly to religious teaching? I know as well as you do, that he roared like a young Turk at the sermon. And pray what was the subject of the sermon? Justification by Faith. Do you mean to tell me that he, or any other child at his time of life, could understand anything of such a subject as that; or get an atom of good out of it? You can't—you know you can't! I say again, it's no use taking him to church yet; and what's more, it's worse than no use, for you only associate his first ideas of religious instruction with everything in the way of restraint and discipline and punishment that can be most irksome to him. There! that's my opinion, and I should like to hear what you've got to say against it?'

'Latitudinarianism,' said Mr. Thorpe, looking and speaking straight at the portrait of the Reverend Aaron Yollop.

'You can't fob me off with long words, which I don't understand, and which I don't believe you can find in Johnson's Dictionary,' continued Mr. Goodworth doggedly. 'You would do much better to take my advice, and let Zack go to church, for the present, at his mother's knees. Let his Morning Service be about ten minutes long; let your wife tell him, out of the New Testament, about Our Savior's goodness and gentleness to little children; and then let her teach him, from the Sermon on the Mount, to be loving and truthful and forbearing and forgiving, for Our Savior's sake. If such precepts as those are enforced—as they may be in one way or another—by examples drawn from his own daily life; from people around him; from what he meets with and notices and asks about, out of doors and in—mark my words, he'll take kindly to his religious instruction. I've seen that in other children: I've seen it in my own children, who were all brought up so. Of course, you don't agree with me! Of course you've got another objection all ready to bowl me down with?'

'Rationalism,' said Mr. Thorpe, still looking steadily at the lithographed portrait of the Reverend Aaron Yollop.