special armchair must not be
appropriated by any one else. Canon Wrottesley always read the morning
paper before any other person in the house had seen it, and then
imparted pieces of intelligence to his relations with a certain air of
self-congratulation, as though conveying news which could only possibly
be known to himself; and it was in this way that Miss Abingdon loved to
have the items of interest retailed to her with instructive comments
upon politics.

CHAPTER V

Mrs. Wrottesley had a theory, which she never asked nor expected any
one to share with her, that most men's mental development ceased at the
age of twelve years. She had watched five sons grow up with, in their
young boyhood, the hardly concealed conviction that each one of them
was destined to be a genius, and that each one would make his mark in
the world. But her sons, as they attained to the fatal age of twelve
years, seemed predestined to disappoint their mother's hopes. Most of
the men whom she knew, and whom her sons brought to the house, were
delightful boys, whatever their ages might be. She liked them, but she
wished sometimes that it were possible to meet a man with a mature
mind. The male interest, she determined, after giving much study to
the subject, centred almost too exclusively round playing with a ball.
She had heard men extolled as grand cricketers and magnificent putters
with an enthusiasm which could hardly have been greater if they had
saved their country or had died for a cause. And she admitted to
herself that the mind of a woman was deficient when she failed to do
justice to these performances.

Her reflections on these and kindred subjects this morning had been
induced by hearing of the determination of Canon Wrottesley to light
the rubbish-heap in the garden. The rubbish-heap had grown high and
Canon Wrottesley had determined to put a match to it. Mrs. Wrottesley
had been married too long not to know that whatever at the moment
engaged her husband's mind required an audience. Her sons also had
expected her to watch and applaud them did they in infancy so much as
jump a small ditch, and she knew that it was the maternal duty, and
admitted, also, that it was the maternal pleasure to watch and applaud
until such time as the several wives of her five sons should take her
place.

The whole of the vicarage household was in requisition as soon as their
reverend master had conceived the happy notion of firing th