mily, who were all of
the same class and nature, would have made a much noisier, less
peaceable household; but they would have been a much jollier and really
more harmonious one. Mr. Copperhead himself somewhat despised his elder
sons, who were like himself, only less rich, less vigorous, and less
self-assertive. He saw, oddly enough, the coarseness of their manners,
and even of their ways of thinking; but yet he was a great deal more
comfortable, more at his ease among them, than he was when seated
opposite his trembling, deprecating, frightened little wife, or that
huge youth who cost him so much and returned him so little. Now and
then, at regular periodical intervals, the head of the family would go
down to Blackheath to dine and spend the night with his son Joe, the
second and the favourite, where there were romping children and a
portly, rosy young matron, and loud talk about City dinners, contracts,
and estimates. This refreshed him, and he came home with many chuckles
over the imperfections of the family.

"My sons buy their wives by the hundred-weight," he would say jocularly
at breakfast the day after; "thirteen stone if she is a pound, is Mrs.
Joe. Expensive to keep up in velvet and satin, not to speak of mutton
and beef. Your mother comes cheap," he would add aside to Clarence, with
a rolling laugh. Thus he did not in the least exempt his descendants
from the universal ridicule which he poured on all the world; but when
he sat down opposite his timid little delicate wife, and by his
University man, who had very little on the whole to say for himself,
Mr. Copperhead felt the increase in gentility as well as the failure in
jollity. "You are a couple of ghosts after Joe and his belongings, you
two. Speak louder, I say, young fellow. You don't expect me to hear that
penny-whistle of yours," he would say, chuckling at them, with a mixture
of pride and disdain. They amused him by their dulness and silence, and
personal awe of him. He was quite out of his element between these two,
and yet the very fact pleasantly excited his pride.

"I speak as gentlemen generally speak," said Clarence, who was sometimes
sullen when attacked, and who knew by experience that his father was
rarely offended by such an argument.

"And I am sure, dear, your papa would never wish you to do otherwise,"
said anxious Mrs. Copperhead, casting a furtive frightened glance at her
husband. He rolled out a mighty laugh from the head of the tab