fe...

"Everybody notices it!" The phrase pricked him. An exaggeration, of
course! Still, a phrase that would not be dismissed by a superior curl
of the lips. Maggie was not Clara, and she did not invent allegations.
His fault! Yes, his fault! Beyond doubt he was occasionally gruff, he
was churlish, he was porcupinish. He did not mean to be so--indeed he
most honestly meant not to be so--but he was. He must change. He must
turn over a new leaf. He wished it had been his own birthday, or,
better still, the New Year, instead of his auntie's birthday, so that he
might have turned over a new leaf at once with due solemnity. He
actually remembered a pious saw uttered over twenty years earlier by
that wretch in a white tie who had damnably devised the Saturday
afternoon Bible-class, a saw which he furiously scorned--"Every day
begins a New Year." Well, every day did begin a New Year! So did every
minute. Why not begin a New Year then, in that minute? He had only to
say in a cajoling, good-natured tone, "All right, all right! Keep your
hair on, my child. I grovel!" He had only to say some such words, and
the excellent, simple, unresentful Maggie would at once be appeased. It
would be a demonstration of his moral strength to say them.

But he could not say them.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THREE.

Nevertheless he did seriously determine to turn over a new leaf at the
very next occasion. His eyes were now following the obituary of Parnell
mechanically, without transmitting any message that his preoccupied
brain would seize. He had been astonished to find that Parnell was only
forty-five. He thought: "Why, at my age Parnell was famous--a great man
and a power!" And there was he, Edwin, eating bacon and eggs opposite
his sister in the humdrum dining-room at Bleakridge. But after all,
what was the matter with the dining-room? It was not the dining-room
that his father had left. He had altered and improved it to suit his
own taste. He was free to do so, and he had done so. He was free in
every way. The division of his father's estate according to the will
had proved unjust to himself; but he had not cared in the least. He had
let Albert do as Albert and Clara pleased. In the settlement Maggie had
taken the house (at a figure too high), and he paid her an adequate rent
for it, while she in turn paid him for her board and lodging. They were
all in clov