If John's father had set before her anything that she and John could do, or any opinion that they might hold, she thought she should have been able to please him, for she considered herself quite inclined to do her duty by her church and her soul in a serious and sensible manner; but to take delight in religion, to add the love of the unseen Father to the fear and reverence that she wanted to cultivate, was something that it alarmed her to think of.
It was all very well to read of it in the Bible, because that concerned a by-gone day, or even to hear a clergyman preach of it, this belonged to his office; but when this old man, with his white beard, talked to her and her husband just as David had talked in some of his psalms, she was afraid, and found his aspiration worse to her than any amount of exhortation could have been.
What so impossible to thought as such a longing for intercourse with the awful and the remote--"With my soul have I desired thee in the night;" "My soul is athirst for God;" no, not so, says the listener who stands without--I will come to his house and make obeisance, but let me withdraw soon again from his presence, and dwell undaunted among my peers.
There is, indeed, nothing concerning which people more fully feel that they cannot away with it than another man's aspiration.
And her husband liked it.

He was not afraid, as she was, of the old man's prayers, though he fully believed they would be answered.
He tried to be loyal to the light he walked in, and his father rested in a trust concerning him and his, which had almost the assurance of possession.
She also, in the course of a few years, came to believe that she must ere long be drawn into a light which as yet had not risen.

She feared it less, but never reached the point of wishing to see it shine.
At varying intervals, Mrs.John Mortimer presented her husband with another lovely and healthy infant, and she also, in her turn, received a gift from her father-in-law, together with the letter of thanks.
In the meantime her husband grew.

He became first manly, more manly than the average man, as is often the case with those who have an unusually long boyhood.

Then by culture and travel he developed the resources of a keenly observant and very thoughtful mind.