Mrs. Stobart was furious with her son for his abandonment of a career in which she had expected him to win distinction. For some months after his "call" she had refused to speak to him, and had left him to his solitary meditations in his own rooms at Stobart Lodge. In this gloomy period they had met only at meals, and it had vexed her to see that her son took no wine, and refused all the daintier dishes upon the table, all those ragouts and salmis that adorned the board in sumptuous covered dishes of Georgian silver, and which were the pride of cook and dinner-giver.
"I give myself a useless trouble in looking at the bill of fare every morning," Mrs. Stobart said angrily, as the side dishes were removed untasted, breaking in upon a melancholy silence that had lasted from the soup to the game. "God knows I need little for myself; but you used to appreciate a good dinner."
"I have learnt to appreciate higher things, madam."
"I might as well order a leg of mutton and a suet pudding every day in the week."
"Indeed, my dear mother, I desire nothing better."
"With a cook at forty guineas a year!"
"Dismiss her, and let the kitchen wench dress our simple meals."
"And make myself a laughing-stock to my friends."
"To your idle acquaintances only—friends esteem us for deeper reasons. Ah, madam, if you would but hearken to the voices I hear, court the friends I love, you would scorn the worldling's life as I scorn it. To the heir of a boundless estate in the Kingdom of Heaven 'tis idle to waste thought and toil upon a trumpery speck of earth."
"Oh, those Oxford Methodists! You have caught their jargon. I am a good Churchwoman, George, and I hate cant."