younger than
himself who bore him eleven children, nine of whom--two sons and seven
daughters--were living. The two eldest daughters had married fairly
well, but at the time of which I am now writing there were still five
unmarried, of ages varying between thirty and twenty-two--and the sons
were neither of them yet off their father's hands. It was plain that if
anything were to happen to Mr Allaby the family would be left poorly off,
and this made both Mr and Mrs Allaby as unhappy as it ought to have made
them.

Reader, did you ever have an income at best none too large, which died
with you all except 200 pounds a year? Did you ever at the same time
have two sons who must be started in life somehow, and five daughters
still unmarried for whom you would only be too thankful to find
husbands--if you knew how to find them? If morality is that which, on
the whole, brings a man peace in his declining years--if, that is to say,
it is not an utter swindle, can you under these circumstances flatter
yourself that you have led a moral life?

And this, even though your wife has been so good a woman that you have
not grown tired of her, and has not fallen into such ill-health as lowers
your own health in sympathy; and though your family has grown up
vigorous, amiable, and blessed with common sense. I know many old men
and women who are reputed moral, but who are living with partners whom
they have long ceased to love, or who have ugly disagreeable maiden
daughters for whom they have never been able to find husbands--daughters
whom they loathe and by whom they are loathed in secret, or sons whose
folly or extravagance is a perpetual wear and worry to them. Is it moral
for a man to have brought such things upon himself? Someone should do
for morals what that old Pecksniff Bacon has obtained the credit of
having done for science.

But to return to Mr and Mrs Allaby. Mrs Allaby talked about having
married two of her daughters as though it had been the easiest thing in
the world. She talked in this way because she heard other mothers do so,
but in her heart of hearts she did not know how she had done it, nor
indeed, if it had been her doing at all. First there had been a young
man in connection with whom she had tried to practise certain manoeuvres
which she had rehearsed in imagination over and over again, but which she
found impossible to apply in practice. Then there had been weeks of a
_wurra wurra_ of hopes and fear