amily that rushed past her, as a mountain torrent might
rush past an untidy flower garden, and, after nearly fourteen years of
maternal experience, she had abandoned the search for a point of
contact with their riotous souls, and contented herself with an
indiscriminate affection for their very creditable bodies. Lady Isabel
had--if the saying may be reversed--"_les qualites de ses defauts_,"
and these latter could have no environment less critical and more
congenial than that in which it had pleased her mother to place her.
It was right and fitting that the wife of the reigning Talbot-Lowry of
Mount Music, should inevitably lead the way at local dinner-parties;
should, with ladylike inaudibleness, declare that "this Bazaar" or
"Village Hall" was open. It was no more than the duty of Major
Talbot-Lowry (D.L., and J.P.) to humanity, that his race should
multiply and replenish the earth, and Lady Isabel had unrepiningly
obliged humanity to the extent of four sons and two daughters. Major
Dick's interest in the multiplication was, perhaps, more abstract than
hers.

"Yes," he would say, genially, to an enquiring farmer, "I have four
ploughmen and two dairymaids!"

Or, to a friend of soldiering days: "Four blackguard boys and only a
brace of the Plentiful Sex!"

A disproportion for which, by some singular action of the mind, he
took to himself considerable credit.

Miss Frederica Coppinger (who will presently be introduced) was
accustomed to scandalise Lady Isabel by the assertion that paternal
affection no more existed in men than in tom-cats. An over-statement,
no doubt, but one that was quite free from malice or disapproval.
Undoubtedly, a father should learn to bear the yoke in his youth, and
Dick was old, as fathers go. It cannot be denied that when the Four
Blackguards began to clamour for mounts with the hounds, and the
representatives of the Plentiful Sex outgrew the donkey, Major
Talbot-Lowry had moments of resentment against his offspring, during
which his wife, like a wise doe-rabbit, found it safest to sweep her
children out of sight, and to sit at the mouth of the burrow, having
armed herself with an appealing headache and a better dinner than
usual. The children liked him; not very much, but sufficient for
general decency and the Fifth Commandment. They loved their mother,
but despised her, faintly; (again, not too much for compliance with
the Commandment aforesaid). Finally, it may be said that Major Dick