pot simmer, the cream
rising to the top; and he would go away sheltered, refreshed, comforted,
with an indefinable sense of comfort.

Beneath the adamant of his self-preserving instinct there was much real
softness in James; a visit to Timothy's was like an hour spent in the lap
of a mother; and the deep craving he himself had for the protection of
the family wing reacted in turn on his feelings towards his own children;
it was a nightmare to him to think of them exposed to the treatment of
the world, in money, health, or reputation. When his old friend John
Street's son volunteered for special service, he shook his head
querulously, and wondered what John Street was about to allow it; and
when young Street was assagaied, he took it so much to heart that he made
a point of calling everywhere with the special object of saying: He knew
how it would be--he'd no patience with them!

When his son-in-law Dartie had that financial crisis, due to speculation
in Oil Shares, James made himself ill worrying over it; the knell of all
prosperity seemed to have sounded. It took him three months and a visit
to Baden-Baden to get better; there was something terrible in the idea
that but for his, James's, money, Dartie's name might have appeared in
the Bankruptcy List.

Composed of a physiological mixture so sound that if he had an earache he
thought he was dying, he regarded the occasional ailments of his wife and
children as in the nature of personal grievances, special interventions
of Providence for the purpose of destroying his peace of mind; but he did
not believe at all in the ailments of people outside his own immediate
family, affirming them in every case to be due to neglected liver.

His universal comment was: "What can they expect? I have it myself, if
I'm not careful!"

When he went to Soames's that evening he felt that life was hard on him:
There was Emily with a bad toe, and Rachel gadding about in the country;
he got no sympathy from anybody; and Ann, she was ill--he did not believe
she would last through the summer; he had called there three times now
without her being able to see him! And this idea of Soames's, building a
house, that would have to be looked into. As to the trouble with Irene,
he didn't know what was to come of that--anything might come of it!

He entered 62, Montpellier Square with the fullest intentions of being
miserable. It was already half-past seven, and Irene, dressed for
dinner, was s