There! my work is done, though I fear it is a weaker likeness of my young Alcides than even the faded photograph by my side, but I could not brook that you, my children, should grow up unknowing of the great character to whom your father and I owe one another, and all besides that is best in our lives.  There are things that must surprise you about your dear father.  Remember that he insisted on my putting them in, and would not have them softened, because, he said, you ought to have the portrait in full, and that, save at his own expense, you could not know the full gratitude he feels to the man who made a new era in our lives.  He says he is not afraid either of the example for you, or that you will respect him less, and I know you will not, for you will only see his truth and generosity.

L. P. T.

All that your mother has written is true—­blessings on her!—­every word of it, except that she never could, and I hope none of you ever will, understand the depth and blackness of the slough Harold Alison drew me out of, by just being the man he was; nor will she show you—­ for indeed she is blind to it herself—­that it was no other than she, with her quiet, upright sweetness and resolution, that was the making of him and of both of us.  Very odd it is that a woman should set it all down in black and white, and never perceive it was all her own doing.  But if you see it, young people, what you have to do is to be thankful for the mother you have got and try to be worthy of her, and if the drop of Alison blood in you should make one of you even the tenth part of what Harold was, then you’ll be your father’s pride, and much more than he deserves.

D. E. ST. G. T.

Thank you, dear brother, for having let me see this, though I know Lucy did not intend it for my eyes, or she would not have been so hard on poor mamma.  It shows me how naughty I must have been to let her get such a notion of our relations with one another, but an outsider can never judge of such things.  For the rest, dear Lucy has done her best, and in many ways she did know him better than anybody else did, and he looked up to her more than to anyone.  But even she cannot reach to the inmost depth of the sweetness out of the strong, nor fully know the wonderful power of tender strength that seemed to wrap one’s mind round and bear one on with him, and that has lasted me ever since, and well it may, for he was the very glory of my life.

V. T.

I am glad to have read it, because it explains a great deal that I was too much of a child to understand; but I don’t like it.  I don’t mean for putting in the fatal thing I did in my ignorant folly.  I knew that, and she has softened my wilfulness.  But there’s too much flummery, and he was a hundred times more than all that.  I had rather recollect him for myself, than have such a ladylike, drawing-room picture; but Lucy means it well, and it is just as he smoothed and combed himself down for her.  Nobody should have done it but George.  He would have made a man of him.