ia, doing well, and had often sent a contribution towards the comfort
of the family, and especially to help Reginald at College. But James had
married a year before, and accordingly was in a less favourable position
for sending help. And indeed these windfalls had never produced much
effect upon the family, who heard of James' gifts vaguely without
profiting by them. All this _donna a penser_ to the elder children.
Having no softening medium of a mother's eyes to look at their father
through, they were more bold in judging him than, perhaps, they ought to
have been; and he did not take pains to fascinate his children, or throw
the glamour of love into their eyes. He took it for granted, frankly and
as a part of nature, that he himself was the first person to be
considered in all matters. So he was, of course--so the father, the
bread-winner, the head of the family, ought to be; and when he has a
wife to keep him upon that pedestal, and to secure that his worship
shall be respected, it becomes natural, and the first article of the
family creed; but somehow when a man has to set forth and uphold this
principle himself, it is less successful; and in Mr. May's case it was
not successful at all. He was not severe or tyrannical, so that they
might have rebelled. He only held the conviction quite honestly and
ingeniously, that his affairs came first, and were always to be attended
to. Nothing could be said against this principle--but it tells badly in
the management of a family unless, indeed, as we have said, it is
managed through the medium of the mother, who takes away all imputation
of selfishness by throwing an awful importance and tender sanctity over
all that happens to be desirable or necessary for "papa."

Mr. May had no wife to watch over the approaches of his study, and talk
of him with reverential importance to her children. This was not his
fault, but his misfortune. Bitterly had he mourned and resented the blow
which took her from him, and deeply felt the loss she was to him. This
was how he spoke of it always, the loss to him; and probably poor Mrs.
May, who had adored and admired her husband to the last day of her life,
would have been more satisfied with this way of mourning for her than
any other; but naturally Ursula, who thought of the loss to herself and
the other children, found fault with this limitation of the misfortune.
A man who has thus to fight for himself does not appear in an amiable
aspect to his