Her version of the matter was
that there had never yet been two parents so self-denying and devoted to
the highest welfare of their children as Theobald and herself. For
Ernest, a very great future--she was certain of it--was in store. This
made severity all the more necessary, so that from the first he might
have been kept pure from every taint of evil. She could not allow
herself the scope for castle building which, we read, was indulged in by
every Jewish matron before the appearance of the Messiah, for the Messiah
had now come, but there was to be a millennium shortly, certainly not
later than 1866, when Ernest would be just about the right age for it,
and a modern Elias would be wanted to herald its approach. Heaven would
bear her witness that she had never shrunk from the idea of martyrdom for
herself and Theobald, nor would she avoid it for her boy, if his life was
required of her in her Redeemer's service. Oh, no! If God told her to
offer up her first-born, as He had told Abraham, she would take him up to
Pigbury Beacon and plunge the--no, that she could not do, but it would be
unnecessary--some one else might do that. It was not for nothing that
Ernest had been baptised in water from the Jordan.
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