brow, was serving out
soup with a touch of the relieving officer in her manner; opposite to
her was her husband, a mild little man in habitually low spirits; and
the rest of the family, Mark's two sisters, Martha and Trixie, and his
younger brother, Cuthbert, were in their respective places.

Mrs. Ashburn looked up severely as he came in. 'You are late again,
Mark,' she said; 'while you are under this roof' (Mrs. Ashburn was
fond of referring to the roof) 'your father and I expect you to
conform to the rules of the house.'

'Well, you see, mother,' explained Mark, sitting down and unfolding
his napkin, 'it was a fine afternoon, so I thought I would walk home
with a friend.'

'There is a time for walking home with a friend, and a time for
dinner,' observed his mother, with the air of quoting something
Scriptural.

'And I've mixed them, mother? So I have; I'm sorry, and I won't do it
again. There, will that do?'

'Make haste and eat your soup, Mark, and don't keep us all waiting for
you.'

Mrs. Ashburn had never quite realised that her family had grown up.
She still talked to Mark as she had done when he was a careless
schoolboy at St. Peter's; she still tried to enforce little moral
lessons and even petty restrictions upon her family generally; and
though she had been long reduced to blank cartridges, it worried them.

The ideal family circle, on re-assembling at the close of the day,
celebrate their reunion with an increasing flow of lively
conversation; those who have been out into the great world describe
their personal experiences, and the scenes, tragic or humorous, which
they have severally witnessed during the day; and when these are
exhausted, the female members take up the tale and relate the humbler
incidents of domestic life, and so the hours pass till bedtime.

Such circles are in all sincerity to be congratulated; but it is to be
feared that in the majority of cases the conversation of a family
whose members meet every day is apt, among themselves, to become
frightfully monosyllabic. It was certainly so with the Ashburns. Mark
and Trixie sometimes felt the silences too oppressive to be borne, and
made desperate attempts at establishing a general discussion on
something or anything; but it was difficult to select a topic that
could not be brought down by an axiom from Mrs. Ashburn, which
disposed of the whole subject in very early infancy. Cuthbert
generally came back from the office tired and some