turning quickly, in embarrassment, and
looking into the fire. The shock to me was as that of a
thunderbolt, for what my Father had said 'was not true'. My
Mother and I, who had been present at the trifling incident, were
aware that it had not happened exactly as it had been reported to
him. My Mother gently told him so, and he accepted the
correction. Nothing could possibly have been more trifling to my
parents, but to me it meant an epoch. Here was the appalling
discovery, never suspected before, that my Father was not as God,
and did not know everything. The shock was not caused by any
suspicion that he was not telling the truth, as it appeared to
him, but by the awful proof that he was not, as I had supposed,
omniscient.

This experience was followed by another, which confirmed the
first, but carried me a great deal further. In our little
back-garden, my Father had built up a rockery for ferns and mosses
and from the water-supply of the house he had drawn a leaden pipe
so that it pierced upwards through the rockery and produced, when
a tap was turned, a pretty silvery parasol of water. The pipe was
exposed somewhere near the foot of the rockery. One day, two
workmen, who were doing some repairs, left their tools during the
dinner-hour in the back-garden, and as I was marching about I
suddenly thought that to see whether one of these tools could
make a hole in the pipe would be attractive. It did make such a
hole, quite easily, and then the matter escaped my mind. But a
day or two afterwards, when my Father came in to dinner, he was
very angry. He had turned the tap, and instead of the fountain
arching at the summit, there had been a rush of water through a
hole at the foot. The rockery was absolutely ruined.

Of course I realized in a moment what I had done, and I sat
frozen with alarm, waiting to be denounced. But my Mother
remarked on the visit of the plumbers two or three days before,
and my Father instantly took up the suggestion. No doubt that was
it; the mischievous fellows had thought it amusing to stab the
pipe and spoil the fountain. No suspicion fell on me; no question
was asked of me. I sat there, turned to stone within, but
outwardly sympathetic and with unchecked appetite.

We attribute, I believe, too many moral ideas to little children.
It is obvious that in this tremendous juncture I ought to have
been urged forward by good instincts, or held back by naughty
ones. But I am sure that the fear whi