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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