ly at his mother, and said:

"These potatoes are burnt, mother."

"Yes, Edgar. I forgot them for a minute. Perhaps you'll have bread if
you can't eat them."

Edgar looked in anger across at Miriam.

"What was Miriam doing that she couldn't attend to them?" he said.

Miriam looked up. Her mouth opened, her dark eyes blazed and winced, but
she said nothing. She swallowed her anger and her shame, bowing her dark
head.

"I'm sure she was trying hard," said the mother.

"She hasn't got sense even to boil the potatoes," said Edgar. "What is
she kept at home for?"

"On'y for eating everything that's left in th' pantry," said Maurice.

"They don't forget that potato-pie against our Miriam," laughed the
father.

She was utterly humiliated. The mother sat in silence, suffering, like
some saint out of place at the brutal board.

It puzzled Paul. He wondered vaguely why all this intense feeling
went running because of a few burnt potatoes. The mother exalted
everything--even a bit of housework--to the plane of a religious trust.
The sons resented this; they felt themselves cut away underneath, and
they answered with brutality and also with a sneering superciliousness.

Paul was just opening out from childhood into manhood. This atmosphere,
where everything took a religious value, came with a subtle fascination
to him. There was something in the air. His own mother was logical. Here
there was something different, something he loved, something that at
times he hated.

Miriam quarrelled with her brothers fiercely. Later in the afternoon,
when they had gone away again, her mother said:

"You disappointed me at dinner-time, Miriam."

The girl dropped her head.

"They are such BRUTES!" she suddenly cried, looking up with flashing
eyes.

"But hadn't you promised not to answer them?" said the mother. "And I
believed in you. I CAN'T stand it when you wrangle."

"But they're so hateful!" cried Miriam, "and--and LOW."

"Yes, dear. But how often have I asked you not to answer Edgar back?
Can't you let him say what he likes?"

"But why should he say what he likes?"

"Aren't you strong enough to bear it, Miriam, if even for my sake? Are
you so weak that you must wrangle with them?"

Mrs. Leivers stuck unflinchingly to this doctrine of "the other cheek".
She could not instil it at all into the boys. With the girls she
succeeded better, and Miriam was the child of her heart. The boys
loathed the other cheek when it was