He spoke so
wisely and so well that his listening guests considered him a paragon of
right-mindedness. He spoke, too, with such emphasis and his rosy gills
and bald head looked so benevolent that it was difficult not to be
carried away by his discourse. I believe two or three heads of families
in the neighbourhood gave their sons absolute liberty of choice in the
matter of their professions--and am not sure that they had not afterwards
considerable cause to regret having done so. The visitors, seeing
Theobald look shy and wholly unmoved by the exhibition of so much
consideration for his wishes, would remark to themselves that the boy
seemed hardly likely to be equal to his father and would set him down as
an unenthusiastic youth, who ought to have more life in him and be more
sensible of his advantages than he appeared to be.
No one believed in the righteousness of the whole transaction more firmly
than the boy himself; a sense of being ill at ease kept him silent, but
it was too profound and too much without break for him to become fully
alive to it, and come to an understanding with himself. He feared the
dark scowl which would come over his father's face upon the slightest
opposition.
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