They did worship him;
and their worship did make him feel superior, perhaps when he was least
so. They did flatter him; for, as Mrs. Hannay said, "He needed a little
patting on the back, now and then, poor fellow." And perhaps he was
really sinking a little to her level; he had so lost his sense of her
vulgarity.

He used to wonder how it was that she had kept Lawson straight. Perfectly
straight, Lawson had been, ever since his marriage. Possibly, probably,
if he had married a wife too inflexibly refined, he would have deviated
somewhat from that perfect straightness. His tastes had always been a
little vulgar. But there was no reason why he should go abroad to gratify
them when he possessed the paragon of amenable vulgarity at home. The
Gardners, whose union was almost miraculously complete, were not in their
way more admirably mated. And Lawson's reform must have been a stiff job
for any woman to tackle at the start.

A woman of marvellous ingenuity and tact. For she had kept Lawson
straight without his knowing it. She had played off one of Lawson's
little weaknesses against the other; had set, for instance, his fantastic
love of eating against his sordid little tendency to drink. Lawson
was now a model of sobriety.

And as she kept Lawson straight without his knowing it, she helped
Majendie, too, without his knowing it, to hold his miserable head up. She
ignored, resolutely, his attitude of dejection. She reminded him that if
he could make nothing else out of his life he could make money. She
convinced him that life, the life of a prosperous ship-owner in Scale,
was worth living, as long as he had Edith and Anne and Peggy to make
money for, especially Peggy.

And Majendie became more and more absorbed in his business, and more and
more he found his pleasure in it; in making money, that is to say, for
the persons whom he loved.

He had come even to find pleasure in making it for a person whom he did
not love, and hardly knew. He provided himself with one punctual and
agreeable sensation every week when he sent off the cheque for the small
sum that was poor Maggie's allowance. Once a week (he had settled it),
not once a month. For Maggie might (for anything he knew) be thriftless.
She might feast for three days, and then starve; and so find her sad way
to the street.

But Maggie was not thriftless. First at irregular intervals, weeks it
might be, or months, she had sent him various diminutive sums towards the
p