His children, subtly, and under cover of the manner of a generation which did not mention money in so many words, had sucked in their father’s firm religious instinct, his quiet knowledge of the value of the individual life, his steady and unconscious worship of the means of keeping it alive. Calmly they had sucked it in, and a thing or two besides. So long as he was there they knew they could afford to make a little free with what must come to them by virtue of his creed. When quite small children, they had listened, rather bored, to his simple statements about money and the things it bought; presently that instinct--shared by the very young with dogs and other animals--for having of the best and consorting with their betters, had helped them to see the real sense of what he said. As time went on, they found gentility insisting more and more that this instinct should be concealed; and they began unconsciously to perfect their father’s creed, draping its formal tenets in the undress of an apparent disregard. For the dogma, “Not worth the money!” they would use the words, “Not good enough!” The teaching, “Business first,” they formulated, “Not more pleasure than your income can afford, your health can stand, or your reputation can assimilate.” There was money waiting for them, and they did not feel it necessary to undertake even those “safe” risks which their father had been obliged to take, to make that money. But they were quite to be depended on. In the choosing of their friends, their sports, their clubs, and occupations, a religious feeling guided them. They knew precisely just how much their income was, and took care neither to spend more nor less. And so devoutly did they act up to their principles, that, whether in the restaurant or country house, whether in the saleroom of a curio shop, whether in their regiments or their offices, they could always feel the presence of the godhead blessing their discreet and comfortable worship. In one respect, indeed, they were more religious than their father, who still preserved the habit of falling on his knees at night, to name with Tibetan regularity a strange god; they did not speak to him about this habit, but they wished he would not do it, being fond of their old father, who continued them into the past. They had gently laughed him out of talking about money, they had gently laughed at him for thinking of it still; but they loved him, and it worried them in secret that he should do this thing, which seemed to them dishonest.