; but owing to some want of
management, either on his part or his wife's, his income never seemed
quite large enough for the needs of the household. The servants' wages
were usually in arrear; the fittings of the house were broken and never
repaired; there were wonderful gaps in the furniture and the china,
which nobody ever appeared to think of filling up. Rupert remembered the
ways of the house when he had boarded there, and was not surprised to
find himself dining upon mutton half-burnt and half-raw, potatoes more
like bullets than vegetables, and a partially cooked rice-pudding,
served upon the remains of at least three dinner-services, accompanied
by sour beer and very indifferent claret. Percival did not even pretend
to eat; he sat back in his chair and declared, with an air of polite
disgust, that he was not hungry. Rupert made up for his deficiencies,
however; he swallowed what was set before him and conversed with his
hostess, who was quite unconscious that anything was amiss. Mrs. Heron
had a vague taste for metaphysics and political economy; she had
beautiful theories of education, which she was always intending, at some
future time, to put into practice for the benefit of her three little
boys, Harry, Willy, and Jack. She spoke of these theories, with her blue
eyes fixed on vacancy and her fork poised gracefully in the air, while
Vivian laboured distastefully through his dinner, and Percival frowned
in silence at the table-cloth.

"I have always thought," Mrs. Heron was saying sweetly, "that children
ought not to be too much controlled. Their development should be
perfectly free. My children grow up like young plants, with plenty of
sun and air; they play as they like; they work when they feel that they
can work best; and, if at times they are a little noisy, at any rate
their noise never develops into riot."

Percival did not, perhaps, intend her to hear him, but, below his
breath, he burst into a sardonic, little laugh and an aside to his
sister Kitty.

"Never into riot! I never heard them stop short of it!"

Mrs. Heron looked at him uncertainly, and took pains to explain herself.

"Up to a certain point, I was going to say, Percival, dear. At the
proper age, I think, that discipline, entire and perfect discipline,
ought to begin."

"And what is the proper age?" said Percival, ironically. "For it seems
to me that the boys are now quite old enough to endure a little
discipline."

"Oh, at present,"