He hated people who did not know where to stop. Ernest
was always so _outre_ and strange; there was never any knowing what he
would do next, except that it would be something unusual and silly. If
he was to get the bit between his teeth after he had got ordained and
bought his living, he would play more pranks than ever he, Theobald, had
done. The fact, doubtless, of his being ordained and having bought a
living would go a long way to steady him, and if he married, his wife
must see to the rest; this was his only chance and, to do justice to his
sagacity, Theobald in his heart did not think very highly of it.
When Ernest came down to Battersby in June, he imprudently tried to open
up a more unreserved communication with his father than was his wont. The
first of Ernest's snipe-like flights on being flushed by Mr Hawke's
sermon was in the direction of ultra-evangelicalism. Theobald himself
had been much more Low than High Church. This was the normal development
of the country clergyman during the first years of his clerical life,
between, we will say, the years 1825 to 1850; but he was not prepared for
the almost contempt with which Ernest now regarded the doctrines of
baptismal regeneration and priestly absolution (Hoity toity, indeed, what
business had he with such questions?), nor for his desire to find some
means of reconciling Methodism and the Church.
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