y. From the bedroom-windows
they will see Lady Noble step into her yellow chariot and drive away.
Envy--an inarticulate, impotent envy--will possess their hearts: why
cannot they be rich, and grown-up, and bowed to by every one? When the
chariot is out of sight, envy will be superseded by the play-instinct.
Silently, in their hearts, the children will play at being Lady
Noble.... Mamma's voice will be heard on the stairs, rasping them back
to the realities. Sullenly they will go down to the schoolroom, and
resume their tasks. But they will not be able to concentrate their
unsettled minds. The girls will make false stitches in the pillow-slips
which they had been hemming so neatly when the yellow chariot drove up
to the front-door; and Master Harry will be merely dazed by that page
of the Delectus which he had almost got by heart. Their discontent will
be inspissated by the knowledge that they are now worse-off than
ever--are in dire disgrace, and that even now the grown-up sister is
'telling Papa' (who knows already, and has but awaited the formal
complaint). Presently the grown-up sister will come into the
schoolroom, looking very grave: 'Children, Papa has something to say to
you.' In the Study, to which, quaking, they will proceed, an endless
sermon awaits them. The sin of Covetousness will be expatiated on, and
the sins of Discord and Hatred, and the eternal torment in store for
every child who is guilty of them. All four culprits will be in tears
soon after the exordium. Before the peroration (a graphic description
of the Lake of Fire) they will have become hysterical. They will be
sent supperless to bed. On the morrow they will have to learn and
repeat the chapter about Cain and Abel. A week, at least, will have
elapsed before they are out of disgrace. Such are the inevitable
consequences of joy in a joyless life. It were well for these children
had 'The Visit' never been paid.

Morland, I suppose, discerned naught of all this tragedy in his
picture. To him, probably, the thing was an untainted idyll, was but
one of those placid homely scenes which he loved as dearly as could
none but the brawler and vagabond that he was. And yet... and yet...
perhaps he did intend something of what we discern here. He may have
been thinking, bitterly, of his own childhood, and of the home he ran
away from.

'YET AGAIN'

SOME CRITICISMS OF THE FIRST EDITION

Mr. Edmund Gosse, in THE WORLD: 'We may find it hard to realise