They had entered somewhat abruptly, and stood rather dramatically by the table on which the father was writing,—­the son with dark set face, in which could be seen both the father and mother, and the daughter, timid and close to him, resolutely keeping back her tears, a slim young copy of the mother.

“Well, my dears?” said the father, looking up with a keen, rather surprised glance, and in a tone which qualified with some severity the “my dears.”

The son had had some exceedingly fine beginnings in his head, but they fled ignominiously with the calm that was necessary for their successful delivery, and he blurted at once to the point.

“We have come to say that we are no longer comfortable at home, and have decided to leave it.”

“Henry,” exclaimed the mother, hastily, “what do you mean, how can you be so ungrateful?”

“Mary, my dear,” interrupted the father, “please leave the matter to me.”  Then turning to the son:  “What is this you are saying?  I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“I mean that Esther and I have decided to leave home and live together; because it is impossible for us to live here any longer in happiness—­”

“On what do you propose to live?”

“My salary will be sufficient for the present.”

“Sixty pounds a year!”

“Yes!”

“And may I ask what is wrong with your home?  You have every comfort—­far more than your mother or father were accustomed to.”

“Yes, indeed!” echoed the mother.

“Yes, we know you are very good and kind, and mean everything for our good; but you don’t understand other needs of our natures, and you make no allowance for our individualities—­”

“Indeed!  Individualities—­I should like you to have heard what my father would have said to talk about individualities.  A rope’s end would have been his answer to that—­”

“It would have been a very silly one, and no argument.”

“It would have been effective, at all events.”

“Not with me—­”

“Well, please don’t bandy words with me, sir.  If you,” particularly addressing his son, “wish to go—­then go; but remember that once you have left your father’s roof, you leave it for ever.  As for your sister, she has no power to leave her mother and father without my consent, and that I shall certainly withhold till she is of a proper age to know what is best for herself—­”

“She will go then without your consent,” defiantly answered the son.

“Oh, Henry, for shame!” exclaimed Mrs. Mesurier.

“Mother dear, I’m sorry,—­we don’t mean to be disrespectful or undutiful,—­but father’s petty tyrannies are more than we can bear.  He objects to the friends we care for; he denies us the theatre—­”

“Most certainly, and shall continue to do so.  I have never been inside a theatre in my life; nor, with my consent, shall any child of mine enter one of them.”