Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/249

 Though the painter was satirical, the picture, to my fond imagination, was delightful. I saw her—herself all in white—bending her golden head over the snowy linen, her hands moving smoothly; it would be a very special iron, silver perhaps. She would do it beautifully, adorably. I should be reminded of some early Italian saint; and all the æsthetic Christianity in me would enjoy a kind of Pre-Raphaelite resurrection.

"H-m," I repeated helplessly. I hadn't the faintest notion how to treat the idea with any profit to a young fellow of Oliver's age and point of view. It simply wasn't in his experience, and I didn't see how to put it there. His fondness for his mother, his complete detachment from her religious interests, his absolute incomprehension of her position appalled me. One can reason with an earnest young intellectual rebel, occasionally to some effect. But an amused young seraph in Oliver's state, contemplating his mother with kindly compassion from his pinnacle of intellectual certitude and religious inexperience—one can't even draw such a person to the portals of argument.

"I hope," I said, "you and Dorothy are behaving yourselves at home, as well as you know how."

"Oh yes," he replied, "we are being good,