"Yes."
"What did you say?"
"I said 'No,'" answered John.
"So, then, you dared to lie," interrupted his father.
"Yes, mother said so," the boy answered.
His mother turned pale, and his father was silent. This in itself was harmless enough, but, taken in connection with other things, not without significance. Slight suspicions regarding the truthfulness of "others" woke in the boy's mind and made him begin to carry on a silent siege of adverse criticism. His coldness towards his father increased, he began to have a keen eye for instances of oppression, and to make small attempts at revolt.
The children were marched to church every Sunday; and the family had a key to their pew. The absurdly long services and incomprehensible sermons soon ceased to make any impression. Before a system of heating was introduced, it was a perfect torture to sit in the pew in winter for two hours at a stretch with one's feet freezing; but still they were obliged to go, whether for their souls' good, or for the sake of discipline, or in order to have quiet in the house—who knows? His father personally was a theist, and preferred to read Wallin's sermons to going to church. His mother began to incline towards pietism.
One Sunday the idea occurred to John, possibly in consequence of an imprudent Bible exposition at school, which had touched upon freedom of the spirit, or something of the sort, not to go to church. He simply remained at home. At dinner, before his father came home, he declared to his brothers and sisters and aunts that no one could compel the conscience of another, and that therefore he did not go to church. This seemed original, and therefore for this once he escaped a caning, but was sent to church as before.
The social intercourse of the family, except with relatives, could not be large, because of the defective form of his father's marriage. But companions in misfortune draw together, and so intercourse was kept up with an old friend of their father's who also had contracted a mésalliance, and had therefore been repudiated by his family. He was a legal official. With him they met another family in the same circumstances owing to an irregular marriage. The children naturally knew nothing of the tragedy below the surface. There were children in both the other families, but John did not feel attracted to them. After the sufferings he had undergone at home and school, his shyness and unsociability had increased, and his residence on the outside of the town and in the country had given him a distaste for domestic life. He did not wish to learn dancing, and thought the boys silly who showed off before the girls. When his mother on one occasion told him to be polite to the latter, he asked, "Why?" He had become critical, and asked this question about everything. During a country excursion he tried to rouse to rebellion the boys who carried the girls' shawls and parasols. "Why should we be these girls' servants?" he said; but they did not listen to him. Finally, he took such a dislike to going out that he pretended to be ill, or dirtied his clothes in order to be obliged to stay at home as a punishment. He was no longer a child, and therefore did not feel comfortable among the other children, but his elders still saw in him only a child. He remained solitary.