Phoebe, Junior. Mrs. Oliphant
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and ingeniously, that his affairs came first, and were always to be attended to. Nothing could be said against this principle—but it tells badly in the management of a family unless, indeed, as we have said, it is managed through the medium of the mother, who takes away all imputation of selfishness by throwing an awful importance and tender sanctity over all that happens to be desirable or necessary for “papa.”
Mr. May had no wife to watch over the approaches of his study, and talk of him with reverential importance to her children. This was not his fault, but his misfortune. Bitterly had he mourned and resented the blow which took her from him, and deeply felt the loss she was to him. This was how he spoke of it always, the loss to him; and probably poor Mrs. May, who had adored and admired her husband to the last day of her life, would have been more satisfied with this way of mourning for her than any other; but naturally Ursula, who thought of the loss to herself and the other children, found fault with this limitation of the misfortune. A man who has thus to fight for himself does not appear in an amiable aspect to his family, to whom, as to all young creatures, it seemed natural that they should be the first objects; and as they were a great trouble and burden to him, perhaps the children did not always bear their most amiable aspect to their father. Both looked selfish to the other, and Mr. May, no doubt, could have made out quite as good a case as the children did. He thought all young people were selfish, taking everything they could, trying to extract even the impossible from the empty purse and strained patience of their elders; and they thought that he was indifferent to them, thinking about himself, as it is a capital sin in a parent to do; and both of them were right and both wrong, as indeed may be said in every case to which there are two sides.
“Ursula has come!” cried the two little ones. Amy and Robin could read their father's face better than they could read those instruments of torture called printed books, and they saw that he was in a good humour, and that they were safe to venture upon the playful liberty of seizing him, one by each hand, and dragging him in. He was a tall man, and the sight of him triumphantly dragged in by these imps, the youngest of whom was about up to his knees, was pretty, and would have gone to the heart of any spectator. He was not himself unconscious of this, and when he was in a good humour, and the children were neat and tolerably dressed, he did not object to being seen by the passers-by dragged up his own steps by those two little ones. The only passers-by, however, on this occasion were a retired shopkeeper and his wife, who had lately bought one of the oldest houses in Grange Lane, and who had come out for a walk as the day was fine. “Mark my words, Tozer,” the lady was saying, “that's a good man though he's a church parson. Them as children hangs onto like that, ain't got no harm in them.”
“He's a rum un, he is,” said Mr. Tozer in reply. It was a pity that the pretty spectacle of the clergyman with his little boy and girl should have been thus thrown away upon a couple of Dissenters, yet it was not without its effect. Amy pulled one arm and Robin pulled the other. They were dark-haired children like all the Mays, and as this peculiarity is rare among children, it gave these two a certain piquancy.
“Well, well,” he said, “take me to Ursula,” and after he had kissed his newly-arrived daughter, he sat down in the faded drawing-room with much geniality, and took one child on each knee.
“I hope you have enjoyed yourself, Ursula,” he said; “of course, we have missed you. Janey has done her best, but she is not very clever at housekeeping, nor does she understand many things that people require, as you have learned to do.”
“Oh, I am so glad you have missed me!” said Ursula, “I mean sorry; I have enjoyed myself very, very much. The Dorsets were so kind, kinder than anybody ever was before.”
“And, papa, they have sent me a new dress.”
“And me too, papa,” chirruped little Amy on his knee.
“You too, Mouse! it was very kind of them; and you went to the Tower and did all the lions, Ursula? that is the lot of country cousins, and the Dorsets would spare you nothing, I suppose.”
“We went to much better things,” said Ursula, producing her theatres and her ball as she had done before. “And, oh, papa, I like them so much. I wish we lived a little nearer. Those poor little Indian children, I fear they will be too much for Cousin Anne; they look so pale and so peevish, not like our children here.”
“Well, they are not pale at all events,” said Mr. May, putting them down; “run and play like good children. You will have heard that we have had something happening to us, even in this quiet place, while you were away.”
“Oh, I was so astonished,” said Ursula, “but Reginald doesn't seem to like it. That is so odd; I should have thought he would have been overjoyed to get something. He used to talk so about having no interest.”
“Reginald is like a great many other people. He does not know his own mind,” said Mr. May, his countenance overcasting. Ursula knew that sign of coming storms well enough, but she was too much interested to forbear.
“What is a sinecure, papa?” she asked, her brother's last word still dwelling in her mind.
“A piece of outrageous folly,” he cried, getting up and striding about the room, “all springing from the foolish books boys read now-a-days, and the nonsense that is put into their minds. Mean! it means that your brother is an ass, that is what it means. After all the money that has been spent upon him—”
“But, papa, we have not spent much, have we? I thought it was his scholarship?” said Ursula with injudicious honesty. Her father turned upon her indignantly.
“I am not aware that I said we. We have nothing to spend upon any one, so far as I know. I said I—the only person in the house who earns any money or is likely to do so, if Reginald goes on in this idiotical way.”
Ursula grew red. She was Mr. May's own daughter, and had a temper too. “If I could earn any money I am sure I would,” she cried, “and only too glad. I am sure it is wanted badly enough. But how is a girl to earn any money? I wish I knew how.”
“You little fool, no one was thinking of you. Do a little more in the house, and nobody will ask you to earn money. Yes, this is the shape things are taking now-a-days,” said Mr. May, “the girls are mad to earn anyhow, and the boys, forsooth, have a hundred scruples. If women would hold their tongues and attend to their own business, I have no doubt we should have less of the other nonsense. The fact is everything is getting into an unnatural state. But if Reginald thinks I am going to maintain him in idleness at his age—”
“Papa, for Heaven's sake don't speak so loud, he will hear you!” said Ursula, letting her fears of a domestic disturbance overweigh her prudence.
“He will hear me? I wish him to hear me,” said Mr. May, raising his voice. “Am I to be kept from saying what I like, how I like, in my own house, for fear that Reginald should hear me, forsooth! Ursula, I am glad to have you at home; but if you take Reginald's part in his folly, and set yourself against the head of the family, you had better go back again and at once. He may defy me, but I shall not be contradicted by a chit of a girl, I give you my word for that.”
Ursula was silent; she grew pale now after her redness of hasty and unconsidered self-defence. Oh, for Cousin Anne to shield and calm her; what a difference it made to plunge back again thus into trouble and strife.
“He thinks it better to be idle at his father's expense than to do a little work for a handsome salary,” said Mr. May; “everything is right that is extracted from his father's pocket, though it is contrary to a high code of honour to accept a sinecure. Fine reasoning that, is it not? The one wrongs nobody, while the other wrongs you and me and all the children, who want every penny I have to spend; but Reginald is much too fine to think of that. He thinks it quite natural that I should go on toiling and stinting myself.”
“Papa, it may be very wrong what he is doing; but if you think he wants to take anything from you—”
“Hold your tongue,” said her father; “I believe in deeds, not in words. He has it in his power to help me, and he chooses instead, for a miserable fantastic notion