to himself. The marriage meant little less than self-effacement for
him; he was to take his wife's name instead of giving her his; he was
to forego his favourite pursuits, and from an independent man of
science pass into a mere appendage to the Purling property--part and
parcel of his wife's goods and chattels as much as the park-palings,
or her last-purchased dinner-service of rare old "blue."

It was odd that Miss Purling's choice should have fallen where it did;
for her tendencies were decidedly upward, and she would have dearly
loved to be styled "my lady," and to have moved freely in the society
of the "blue-blooded of the land." It was her distrustfulness which
had stood in the way. She feared that in an aristocratic alliance she
could not have made her own terms. And with the results of this
marriage with Dr. Purling--as he was henceforth styled--she had every
reason to be pleased. He proved a most exemplary husband--the chief of
her subjects, nothing more; a loyal, unpretending vassal, who did not
ask to share the purple, but was content to sit upon the steps of the
throne. He continued a shy, reserved, unobtrusive little man to the
end of the chapter; and the chapter was closed without unnecessary
delay as soon as the birth of a son secured the succession of the
Purling estates. Dr. Purling felt there was nothing more required of
him, so he quietly died.

His widow raised a tremendous tablet to his memory, eulogising his
scientific attainments and domestic worth; but, although she appeared
inconsolable, she was secretly pleased to have the uncontrolled
education of her infant son. An elderly lady with a baby-boy is like a
girl with a doll--just as the little mother dresses and undresses its
counterfeit presentment of a child in wax and rags, crooning over its
tiny cradle, talking to it in baby-language, pretending to watch with
anxious solicitude its every mood, so Mrs. Purling found in Harold a
plaything of which she never tired. She coddled and cosseted him to
her heart's content. If he had cried for the moon some effort would
have been made to obtain for him the loan of that pale planet, or the
best substitute for it that could be got for cash. If his finger
ached, or he had a pain in his big toe, he was physicked with half the
Pharmacopoeia; he underwent divers systems of regimen, was kept out
of draughts, cautioned against chills, cased in red flannel; he might,
to crown all, have been laid by in cotton-