not
the Lord's will that I should attend the Browns' party. My
Father's attitude seemed to me to be hardly fair, since he did
not scruple to remind the Deity of various objections to a life
of pleasure and of the snakes that lie hidden in the grass of
evening parties. It would have been more scrupulous, I thought,
to give no sort of hint of the kind of answer he desired and
expected.

It will be justly said that my life was made up of very trifling
things, since I have to confess that this incident of the Browns'
invitation was one of its landmarks. As I knelt, feeling very
small, by the immense bulk of my Father, there gushed though my
veins like a wine the determination to rebel. Never before, in
all these years of my vocation, had I felt my resistance take
precisely this definite form. We rose presently from the sofa, my
forehead and the backs of my hands still chafed by the texture of
the horsehair, and we faced one another in the dreary light. My
Father, perfectly confident in the success of what had really
been a sort of incantation, asked me in a loud wheedling voice,
'Well, and what is the answer which our Lord vouchsafes?' I said
nothing, and so my Father, more sharply, continued, 'We have
asked Him to direct you to a true knowledge of His will. We have
desired Him to let you know whether it is, or is not, in
accordance with His wishes that you should accept this invitation
from the Browns.' He positively beamed down at me; he had no
doubt of the reply. He was already, I believe, planning some
little treat to make up to me for the material deprivation. But
my answer came, in the high-piping accents of despair: 'The Lord
says I may go to the Browns.' My Father gazed at me in speechless
horror. He was caught in his own trap, and though he was certain
that the Lord had said nothing of the kind, there was no road
open for him but just sheer retreat. Yet surely it was an error
in tactics to slam the door.

It was at this party at the Browns--to which I duly went,
although in sore disgrace--that my charnel poets played me a mean
trick. It was proposed that 'our young friends' should give their
elders the treat of repeating any pretty pieces that they knew by
heart. Accordingly a little girl recited 'Casabianca', and
another little girl 'We are Seven', and various children were
induced to repeat hymns, 'some rather long', as Calverley says,
but all very mild and innocuously evangelical. I was then asked
by Mrs.