“I shall bow, in spite of Dr. Grey and his crotchets,” said she.  “But I suppose you are too much afraid of your husband.”  Christian did not reply, and the conversation dropped.

One good thing cheered her.  Sir Edwin Uniacke remained in Avonsbridge, and Miss Susan Bennett was still staying, and doing well in the house of the blind old woman forty miles away.

Shortly her mind became full of far closer cares.

The domestic atmosphere of the Lodge was growing daily more difficult to breathe in.  What is it that constitutes an unhappy household?  Not necessarily a wicked or warring household but still not happy; devoid of that sunniness which, be the home ever so poor, makes it feel like “a little heaven below” to those who dwell in it, or visit it, or even casually pass it by.  “See how these Christians love one another,” used to be said by the old heathen world; and the world says it still—­nay, is compelled to say it, of any real Christian home.  Alas it could not always be said of Dr. Grey’s.

Perhaps, in any case, this was unlikely.  There were many conflicting elements therein.  Whatever may be preached, and even practiced sometimes, satisfactorily, about the advantages of communism, the law of nature is that a family be distinct within itself—­should consist of father, mother, and children, and them only.  Any extraneous relationships admitted therein are always difficult and generally impossible.  In this household, long ruled theoretically by Miss Gascoigne, and practically by Phillis, who was the cleverest and most determined woman in it, the elements of strife were always smoldering, and frequently bursting out into a flame.  The one bone of contention was, as might be expected, the children—­who should rule them, and whether that rule was to be one of love or fear,

Christian, though young, was neither ignorant nor inexperienced; and when, day by day and week by week, she had to sit still and see that saddest of all sights to a tender heart, children slowly ruined, exasperated by injustice, embittered by punishment, made deceitful or cowardly by continual fear, her spirit wakened up to its full dignity of womanhood and motherhood.

“They are my children, and I will not have things thus,” was her continual thought.  But how to effect her end safely and unobnoxiously was, as it always is, the great difficulty.

She took quiet methods at first—­principally the very simple one of loving the children till they began to love her.  Oliver, and by-and-by Letitia, seized every chance of escaping out of the noisy nursery, where Phillis boxed, or beats or scolded all day long, to mother’s quiet room, where they always found a gentle word and a smile—­a little rivulet from that

    "Constant stream of love which knew no fail"

which was Cowper’s fondest memory of his mother, and which should be perpetually flowing out from the hearts of all mothers toward all children.  These poor children had never known it till now.