'I thought religion was rather a matter of feeling.'
'I believe I used to think so.'
'And pray, what is it, then, Pitt?' his mother asked.
'Look here, mamma. "If any man will serve me, let him follow me."'
'Well, what do you understand by that, Pitt? You are going too fast for me. I thought the love of God was the whole of religion.'
'But here is the "following," mamma.'
'What sort of following?'
'That is what I am asking. As it cannot be in bodily, so it must be in mental footsteps.'
'I do not understand you,' said his mother, with an air both vexed and anxious; while Miss Frere had now let her embroidery fall, and was giving her best consideration to the subject and the speaker. She was a little annoyed too, but she was more interested. This was a different sort of conversation from any she had been accustomed to hear, and Pitt was a different sort of speaker. He was not talking to kill time, or to please her; he was—most wonderful and rare!—in earnest; and that not in any matter that involved material interests. She had seen people in earnest before on matters of speculation and philosophy, often on stocks and schemes for making money, in earnest violently on questions of party politics; but in earnest for the truth's sake, never, in all her life. It was a new experience, and Pitt was a novel kind of person; manly, straightforward, honest; quite a person to be admired, to be respected, to be— Where were her thoughts running?
He had sat silent a moment, after his mother's last remark; gravely thinking. Betty brought him back to the point.