, because he thought his money's power
to buy him immunity from family annoyances one of its chief values. She,
and everyone else, thought she ruled him; in fact, she not only did not
rule him, but had not even influence with him in the smallest trifle of
the matters he regarded as important.

The last time he had looked carefully at her--many, many years before--he
had thought her beautiful; he assumed thenceforth that she was still
beautiful, and was therefore proud of her. In like manner he had made up
his mind favorably to his children. As the bills grew heavier and
heavier, from year to year, with the wife and two children assiduously
expanding them, he paid none the less cheerfully. "There is some
satisfaction in paying up for them," reflected he. "At least a man can
feel that he's getting his money's worth." And he contrasted his luck
with the bad luck of so many men who had to "pay up" for "homely frumps,
that look worse the more they spend."

But Arthur was replying to Mrs. Whitney's remark with a bitter "Nobody
can do anything with father; he's narrow and obstinate. If you argue with
him, he's silent. He cares for nothing but his business."

Arthur did not hesitate to speak thus frankly to Mrs. Whitney. She seemed
a member of the family, like a sister of his mother or father who had
lived with them always; also he accepted her at the valuation she and all
her friends set upon her--he, like herself and them, thought her generous
and unselfish because she was lavish with sympathetic words and with
alms--the familiar means by which the heartless cheat themselves into a
reputation for heart. She always left the objects of her benevolence the
poorer for her ministrations, though they did not realize it. She adopted
as the guiding principle of her life the cynical philosophy--"Give people
what they want, never what they need." By sympathizing effusively with
those in trouble, she encouraged them in low-spiritedness; by lavishing
alms, she weakened struggling poverty into pauperism. But she took away
and left behind enthusiasm for her own moral superiority and humanity.
Also she deceived herself and others with such fluid outpourings of fine
phrases about "higher life" and "spiritual thinking" as so exasperated
Hiram Ranger.

Now, instead of showing Arthur what her substratum of shrewd sense
enabled her to see, she ministered soothingly unto his vanity. His father
was altogether wrong, tyrannical, cruel; he himsel