then he had
never been accustomed to look for that, and the effect might have been
irksome rather than pleasant. His household went on velvet under the
care of a respectable couple who had "done for" Mr. Tatham for years. He
would not have submitted to extortion or waste, but everything was ample
in the house; the cook by no means stinted in respect to butter or any
of those condiments which are as necessary to good cooking as air is to
life. Mr. Tatham would not have understood a lack of anything, or that
what was served to him should not have been the best, supplied and
served in the best way. Failure on such points would have so much
surprised him that he would scarcely have known what steps to take. But
Jervis, his butler, knew what was best as well as Mr. Tatham did, and
was quite as little disposed to put up with any shortcoming. I say I am
not sorry for him that he was not married--up to this time. But, as a
matter of fact, the time does come when one becomes sorry for the
well-to-do, highly respectable, refined, and agreeable man who has
everything that heart can desire, except the best things in life--love,
and the companionship of those who are his very own. When old age looms
in sight everything is changed. But Mr. Tatham, as has been said, was
not quite fifty, and old age seemed as far off as if it could never be.

He was a man who was very good to a number of people, and spent almost
as much money in being kind as if he had possessed extravagant children
of his own. His sister Mary, for instance, had married a clergyman not
very well off, and the natural result had followed. How they could have
existed without Uncle John, much less how they could have stumbled into
public schools, scholarships, and all the rest of it, would be difficult
to tell, especially now in these days when a girl's schooling ought, we
are told, to cost as much as a boy's. This latter is a grievance which
must be apparent to the meanest capacity. Unless the girl binds herself
by the most stringent vows _not_ to marry a poor curate or other
penniless man the moment that you have completed her expensive education,
I do not think she should in any case be permitted to go to Girton.
It is all very well when the parents are rich or the girls have a
sufficiency of their own. But to spend all that on a process which,
instead of fructifying in other schools and colleges, or producing in
life a highly accomplished woman, is to be lost at once an