ousness. We take him at
his own valuation, humbly. Yet we have a queer instinct that there was
a time when he did not diffuse all this cold radiance of good example.
Something tells us that he has been a sinner in his day--a rattler of
the ivories at Almack's, and an ogler of wenches in the gardens of
Vauxhall, a sanguine backer of the Negro against the Suffolk Bantam,
and a devil of a fellow at boxing the watch and wrenching the knockers
when Bow Bells were chiming the small hours. Nor do we feel that he is
a penitent. He is too Olympian for that. He has merely put these things
behind him--has calmly, as a matter of business, transferred his
account from the worldly bank to the heavenly. He has seen fit to
become 'Papa.' As such, strong in the consciousness of his own
perfection, he has acquired, gradually, quasi-divine powers over his
children. Himself invisible, we know that he can always see them.
Himself remote, we know that he is always with them, and that always
they feel his presence. He prevents them in all their ways. The Mormon
Eye is not more direly inevitable than he. Whenever they offend in word
or deed, he knows telepathically, and fixes their punishment, long
before they are arraigned at his judgment-seat.

At this moment, as at all others, Mr. Thompson has his inevitable eye
on his children, and they know that it is on them. He is well enough
pleased with them at this moment. But alas! we feel that ere the sun
sets they will have incurred his wrath. Presently Lady Noble will have
finished her genial inspection, and have sailed back, under convoy of
the mother and the grown-up daughter, to the parlour, there to partake
of that special dish of tea which is even now being brewed for her.
When the children are left alone, their pent excitement will overflow
and wash them into disgrace. Belike, they will quarrel over the
nectarines. There will be bitter words, and a pinch, and a scratch, and
a blow, screams, a scrimmage. The rout will be heard afar in the
parlour. The grown-up sister will hasten back and be beheld suddenly, a
quelling figure, on the threshold: 'For shame, Clara! Mary, I wonder at
you! Henry, how dare you, sir? Silence, Ethel! Papa shall hear of
this.' Flushed and rumpled, the guilty four will hang their heads,
cowed by authority and by it perversely reconciled one with another.
Authority will bid them go upstairs 'this instant,' there to shed their
finery and resume the drab garb of every da