He had been named Samuel because Constance would have him named after his father, and Cyril because his father secretly despised the name of Samuel; and he was called Cyril; ‘Master Cyril,’ by Amy, definite successor to Maggie.  His mother’s thoughts were on Cyril as long as she was awake.  His father, when not planning Cyril’s welfare, was earning money whose unique object could be nothing but Cyril’s welfare.  Cyril was the pivot of the house; every desire ended somewhere in Cyril.  The shop existed now solely for him.  And those houses that Samuel bought by private treaty, or with a shamefaced air at auctions—­somehow they were aimed at Cyril.  Samuel and Constance had ceased to be self-justifying beings; they never thought of themselves save as the parents of Cyril.

They realized this by no means fully.  Had they been accused of monomania they would have smiled the smile of people confident in their commonsense and their mental balance.  Nevertheless, they were monomaniacs.  Instinctively they concealed the fact as much as possible; They never admitted it even to themselves.  Samuel, indeed, would often say:  “That child is not everybody.  That child must be kept in his place.”  Constance was always teaching him consideration for his father as the most important person in the household.  Samuel was always teaching him consideration for his mother as the most important person in the household.  Nothing was left undone to convince him that he was a cipher, a nonentity, who ought to be very glad to be alive.  But he knew all about his importance.  He knew that the entire town was his.  He knew that his parents were deceiving themselves.  Even when he was punished he well knew that it was because he was so important.  He never imparted any portion of this knowledge to his parents; a primeval wisdom prompted him to retain it strictly in his own bosom.

He was four and a half years old, dark, like his father; handsome like his aunt, and tall for his age; not one of his features resembled a feature of his mother’s, but sometimes he ’had her look.’  From the capricious production of inarticulate sounds, and then a few monosyllables that described concrete things and obvious desires, he had gradually acquired an astonishing idiomatic command over the most difficult of Teutonic languages; there was nothing that he could not say.  He could walk and run, was full of exact knowledge about God, and entertained no doubt concerning the special partiality of a minor deity called Jesus towards himself.

Now, this party was his mother’s invention and scheme.  His father, after flouting it, had said that if it was to be done at all, it should be done well, and had brought to the doing all his organizing skill.  Cyril had accepted it at first—­merely accepted it; but, as the day approached and the preparations increased in magnitude, he had come to look on it with favour, then with enthusiasm.  His father having taken him to Daniel Povey’s opposite, to choose cakes, he had shown, by his solemn and fastidious waverings, how seriously he regarded the affair.