m we can use. I've only just looked into them; they're not at all what
I expected--dull, stupid things--nothing of the roaring
fire-and-brimstone sort that I expected.'

'Roaring? No; Tryan's as soft as a sucking dove--one of your
honey-mouthed hypocrites. Plenty of devil and malice in him, though, I
could see that, while he was talking to the Bishop; but as smooth as a
snake outside. He's beginning a single-handed fight with me, I can
see--persuading my clients away from me. We shall see who will be the
first to cry _peccavi_. Milby will do better without Mr. Tryan than
without Robert Dempster, I fancy! and Milby shall never be flooded with
cant as long as I can raise a breakwater against it. But now, get the
breakfast things cleared away, and let us set about the play-bill. Come,
mamsey, come and have a walk with me round the garden, and let us see how
the cucumbers are getting on. I've never taken you round the garden for
an age. Come, you don't want a bonnet. It's like walking in a greenhouse
this morning.'

'But she will want a parasol,' said Janet. 'There's one on the stand
against the garden-door, Robert.'

The little old lady took her son's arm with placid pleasure. She could
barely reach it so as to rest upon it, but he inclined a little towards
her, and accommodated his heavy long-limbed steps to her feeble pace. The
cat chose to sun herself too, and walked close beside them, with tail
erect, rubbing her sleek sides against their legs,--too well fed to be
excited by the twittering birds. The garden was of the grassy, shady
kind, often seen attached to old houses in provincial towns; the
apple-trees had had time to spread their branches very wide, the shrubs
and hardy perennial plants had grown into a luxuriance that required
constant trimming to prevent them from intruding on the space for
walking. But the farther end, which united with green fields, was open
and sunny.

It was rather sad, and yet pretty, to see that little group passing out
of the shadow into the sunshine, and out of the sunshine into the shadow
again: sad, because this tenderness of the son for the mother was hardly
more than a nucleus of healthy life in an organ hardening by disease,
because the man who was linked in this way with an innocent past, had
become callous in worldliness, fevered by sensuality, enslaved by chance
impulses; pretty, because it showed how hard it is to kill the deep-down
fibrous roots of human love and goodness-