ualities. A rope's end would
have been his answer to that--"

"It would have been a very silly one, and no argument."

"It would have been effective, at all events."

"Not with me--"

"Well, please don't bandy words with me, sir. If you," particularly
addressing his son, "wish to go--then go; but remember that once you
have left your father's roof, you leave it for ever. As for your sister,
she has no power to leave her mother and father without my consent, and
that I shall certainly withhold till she is of a proper age to know what
is best for herself--"

"She will go then without your consent," defiantly answered the son.

"Oh, Henry, for shame!" exclaimed Mrs. Mesurier.

"Mother dear, I'm sorry,--we don't mean to be disrespectful or
undutiful,--but father's petty tyrannies are more than we can bear. He
objects to the friends we care for; he denies us the theatre--"

"Most certainly, and shall continue to do so. I have never been inside a
theatre in my life; nor, with my consent, shall any child of mine enter
one of them."

"You can evidently know little about them then, and you'd be a much
finer man if you had," flashed out the son.

"Your sitting in judgment on your father is certainly very pretty, I
must say,"--answered the father,--"very pretty; and I can only hope that
you will not have cause to regret it some future day. But I cannot allow
you to disturb me," for, with something of a pang, Henry noticed signs
of agitation amid the severity of his parent, though the matter was too
momentous for him to allow the indulgence of pity.

"You have been a source of much anxiety to your mother and me, a child
of many prayers;" the father continued. "Whether it is the books you
read, or the friends you associate with, that are responsible for your
strange and, to my thinking, impious opinions, I do not know; but this I
know, that your influence on your sister has not of late been for good,
and for her sake, and the sake of your young sisters, it may perhaps be
well that your influence in the home be removed--"

"Oh, James," exclaimed the wife.

"Mary, my dear, you must let me finish. If Henry will go, go he shall;
but if he still stays, he must learn that I am master in this house, and
that while I remain so, not he, but I shall dictate how it is to be
carried on."

It was at this point that Esther ventured to lift the girlish tremor of
her voice.

"But, father, if you'll forgive my saying so, I think i