seless activity, the three open-eyed staring children, the faded
mother. Sometimes, indeed, Nettie, too clear of the necessity of her
own exertions, and too simply bent upon her business, to feel any
sentimental shame of her relations, was seen quickening the sluggish
steps of Fred himself, who shuffled along by her side in a certain
flush of self-disgust, never perceptible upon him under any other
circumstances. Even Fred was duly moved by her vicinity. When he saw
other people look at them, his bemused intellect was still alive enough
to comprehend that people were aware of his dismal dependence upon that
fairy creature, whom it was a shame to think of as the support not only
of his deserted children, but of his own base comforts and idleness. But
the spur, though it pricked, did not goad him into any action. When he
got home, he took refuge in his room up-stairs, in the hazy atmosphere
drugged with the heavy fumes of his pipe, and stretched his slovenly
limbs on his sofa, and buried his confused faculties in his old novel.
So he lived day by day, circumscribed in the most dangerous of his
indulgences by Nettie's unhesitating strictures and rules, which nobody
dared break, but unlimited in his indolence, his novel, and his pipe.
That stifling fire, that close room, the ashes of the pipe on the table,
the listless shabby figure on the sofa, were the most dismal part of the
interior at St Roque's Cottage, so far as it appeared to the external
eye. But it is doubtful whether Mrs Fred, spiteful and useless, with
her poor health, her selfish love, her utter unreason, dawdling over
trifling matters which she never completed; or the three children,
entirely unrespectful of father and mother, growing up amid that wonderful
subversion of the ordinary rules of nature, with some loyalty to Nettie,
but no reverence in them, were not as appalling companions to live with.
Nettie, however, did not consider the matter as a spectator might. She
did not enter into it at all as a matter to be criticised; they simply
belonged to her as they were. She knew their faults without loving them
less, or feeling it possible that faults could make any difference to
those bonds of nature. Fred, indeed, did afflict her lively impatient
spirit;--she had tried to quicken him into life at first--she gave him
up with a certain frank scorn now, and accepted her position. Thus he
was to be all his life long this big cumberer of the ground. Nettie,
valorous