Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 1.djvu/36

24 limbs in knee breeches and gaiters,—or black silk stockings on state occasions. He was a man of fixed principles, strong prejudices, and regular habits,—intolerant of dissent in any shape, acting under a firm conviction that his opinions were always right, and whoever differed from them, must be, either most deplorably ignorant, or wilfully blind.

In childhood, I had always been accustomed to regard him with a feeling of reverential awe—but lately, even now, surmounted, for, though he had a fatherly kindness for the well-behaved, he was a strict disciplinarian, and had often sternly reproved our juvenile failings and peccadillos; and moreover, in those days whenever he called upon our parents, we had to stand up before him, and say our catechism, or repeat "How doth the little busy bee," or some other hymn, or—worse than all—be questioned about his last text and the heads of the discourse, which we never could remember. Sometimes, the worthy gentleman would