iracle had there been anyone present sufficiently interested to observe
and believe in it. Miracles, however, do not begin to exist until at
least one person believes, and the available credence in the household
had been monopolized by Tom's young cousin. The great difference
between Tom and Henry was that Tom had faults, whereas Henry had
none--yet Tom was the elder by seven years and ought to have known
better! Mr. Knight had always seen Tom's faults, but it was only since
the advent of Henry that Mrs. Knight, and particularly Aunt Annie, had
begun to see them. Before Henry arrived, Tom had been Aunt Annie's
darling. The excellent spinster took pains never to show that Henry had
supplanted him; nevertheless, she showed it all the time. Tom's faults
flourished and multiplied. There can be no question that he was idle,
untruthful, and unreliable. In earliest youth he had been a merry prank;
he was still a prank, but not often merry. His spirit seemed to be
overcast; and the terrible fact came out gradually that he was not
'nicely disposed.' His relatives failed to understand him, and they gave
him up like a puzzle. He was self-contradictory. For instance, though a
shocking liar, he was lavish of truth whenever truth happened to be
disconcerting and inopportune. He it was who told the forewoman of his
uncle's millinery department, in front of a customer, that she had a
moustache. His uncle threshed him. 'She _has_ a moustache, anyhow!'
said this Galileo when his uncle had finished. Mr. Knight wished Tom to
go into the drapery, but Tom would not. Tom wanted to be an artist; he
was always drawing. Mr. Knight had only heard of artists; he had never
seen one. He thought Tom's desire for art was mere wayward naughtiness.
However, after Tom had threatened to burn the house down if he was not
allowed to go to an art-school, and had carried out his threat so far as
to set fire to a bale of cotton-goods in the cellar, Mr. Knight yielded
to the whim for the sake of peace and a low temperature. He expansively
predicted ultimate disaster for Tom. But at the age of eighteen and a
half, Tom, with his habit of inconvenience, simply fell into a post as
designer to a firm of wholesale stationers. His task was to design
covers for coloured boxes of fancy notepaper, and his pay was two
guineas a week. The richness of the salary brought Mr. Knight to his
senses; it staggered, sobered, and silenced him. Two guineas a week at
eighteen and a hal