cidentally discovered that he was exactly
the same age that I was. This, and the fact that he was a
meditative and sober little boy, attracted us all still further
to George, who became converted under one of my Father's sermons.
He attended my public baptism, and was so much moved by this
ceremony that he passionately desired to be baptized also, and
was in fact so immersed, a few months later, slightly to my
chagrin, since I thereupon ceased to be the only infant prodigy
in communion. When we were both in our thirteenth year, George
became an outdoor servant to us, and did odd jobs under the
gardener. My Father, finding him, as he said, 'docile, obedient
and engaging', petted George a good deal, and taught him a little
botany. He called George, by a curious contortion of thought, my
'spiritual foster-brother', and anticipated for him, I think, a
career, like mine, in the Ministry.

Our garden suffered from an incursion of slugs, which laid the
verbenas in the dust, and shore off the carnations as if with
pairs of scissors. To cope with this plague we invested in a
drake and a duck, who were christened Philemon and Baucis. Every
night large cabbage-leaves, containing the lees of beer, were
spread about the flower-beds as traps, and at dawn these had
become green parlours crammed with intoxicated slugs. One of
George's earliest morning duties was to free Philemon and Baucis
from their coop, and, armed with a small wand, to guide their
footsteps to the feast in one cabbage-leaf after another. My
Father used to watch this performance from an upper window, and,
in moments of high facetiousness, he was wont to parody the poet
Gray:

How jocund doth George drive his team afield!

This is all, or almost all, that I remember about George's
occupations, but he was singularly blameless.

My Father's plan now was that I should form a close intimacy with
George, as a boy of my own age, of my own faith, of my own
future. My stepmother, still in bondage to the social
conventions, was passionately troubled at this, and urged the
barrier of class-differences. My Father replied that such an
intimacy would keep me 'lowly', and that from so good a boy as
George I could learn nothing undesirable. 'He will encourage him
not to wipe his boots when he comes into the house,' said my
stepmother, and my Father sighed to think how narrow is the
horizon of Woman's view of heavenly things.

In this caprice, if I may call it so, I think