ime; perhaps the very weaknesses and importunities
of Sidney, the hourly sacrifices the child entailed upon her, endeared
the younger son more to her from that natural sense of dependence and
protection which forms the great bond between mother and child; perhaps
too, as Philip had been one to inspire as much pride as affection, so
the pride faded away with the expectations that had fed it, and carried
off in its decay some of the affection that was intertwined with it.
However this be, Philip had formerly appeared the more spoiled and
favoured of the two: and now Sidney seemed all in all. Thus, beneath the
younger son's caressing gentleness, there grew up a certain regard for
self; it was latent, it took amiable colours; it had even a certain
charm and grace in so sweet a child, but selfishness it was not the
less. In this he differed from his brother. Philip was self-willed:
Sidney self-loving. A certain timidity of character, endearing perhaps
to the anxious heart of a mother, made this fault in the younger boy
more likely to take root. For, in bold natures, there is a lavish and
uncalculating recklessness which scorns self unconsciously and though
there is a fear which arises from a loving heart, and is but sympathy
for others--the fear which belongs to a timid character is but
egotism--but, when physical, the regard for one's own person: when
moral, the anxiety for one's own interests.

It was in a small room in a lodging-house in the suburb of H---- that
Mrs. Morton was seated by the window, nervously awaiting the knock
of the postman, who was expected to bring her brother's reply to her
letter. It was therefore between ten and eleven o'clock--a morning in
the merry month of June. It was hot and sultry, which is rare in an
English June. A flytrap, red, white, and yellow, suspended from the
ceiling, swarmed with flies; flies were on the ceiling, flies buzzed at
the windows; the sofa and chairs of horsehair seemed stuffed with
flies. There was an air of heated discomfort in the thick, solid moreen
curtains, in the gaudy paper, in the bright-staring carpet, in the
very looking-glass over the chimney-piece, where a strip of mirror lay
imprisoned in an embrace of frame covered with yellow muslin. We may
talk of the dreariness of winter; and winter, no doubt, is desolate: but
what in the world is more dreary to eyes inured to the verdure and bloom
of Nature--,

"The pomp of groves and garniture of fields,"
--than