perceive incipient signs of them, but they demand the constant exercise
of their opposites in their fellow men.

Mr Ffolliot was puzzled.

Among the words he used most constantly, both on paper and in
conversation, were "fine shades" and "fineness" in its most
psychological sense. "Fineness" was a quality he was for ever
belauding: a quality that he believed was only to be found in persons
of complex character and unusually sensitive organisation.

And yet he grudgingly conceded that he had, that afternoon, been
confronted by it in two of his own quite ordinary children.

What rankled, however, was that Buz, at all events, seemed doubtful
whether he, the Squire, possessed it. The dubious and thrice-repeated
"you do understand, don't you, father?" rang in his ears.

How was it that Buz, the shallow and mercurial, seemed to fear that
what was so plain to him might be hidden from his father?

Undesired and wholly irrelevant there flashed into his mind that walk
with Mary, a short ten days ago, when he had reproached her with her
limitations, her power to grasp only the obvious. And it was suddenly
revealed to Mr Ffolliot that certain obligations were obvious to his
children that were by no means equally clear to him.

Why was this?

As if in answer came his own phrase, used so often in contemptuous
explanation of their more troublesome vagaries--"the Grantly Strain."

He was fair-minded and he admired courage. He in no way underrated the
effort it must have been for Grantly and Buz to come and confess their
peccadillos to him. And he knew very well that only because they felt
someone else was involved had they summoned up courage to do so.

If their evil-doings were discovered, they did not lie, these noisy,
blundering children of his; but they never showed the smallest desire
to draw attention to their escapades.

His mind seemed incapable of concentration that afternoon, for now he
began to wonder how it was that "the children" lately had managed to
emerge from the noun of multitude and each had assumed a separate
identity with marked and definite characteristics.

There was Mary . . .

Mr Ffolliot frowned. If it hadn't been for Mary he really would have
been quite glad to ask young Gallup to dinner. But Mary complicated
matters; for he had instantly divined what had struck none of the
others, a connection between the Liberal member's amiability to his
sons and the fact that those sons possessed a