Mr Lycett-Landon himself had a solid satisfaction in Liverpool. He put all objections down at once with statistics and an intimation that people who did not respect the second seaport in the kingdom were themselves but little worthy of respect. His wife, however, was like the young people, and patronised the town. At the time when the following incidents began to happen the family consisted of six children. These happy people had not been without their griefs, and there was more than one gap in the family. Horace was not the eldest, nor was little Julian the youngest of the children. But these times of grief had passed over, as they do, though no one can believe it, and scarcely disturbed the general history of happiness looking back upon it, though they added many experiences, made sad thoughts familiar, and gave to the mother at least a sanctuary of sorrow to which she retired often in the bustle of life, and was more strengthened than saddened, though she herself scarcely knew this. Horace was twenty, and his sister Millicent eighteen, the others descending by degrees to the age of six. There was a great deal of education going on in the family, into which Mrs Lycett-Landon threw herself with fervour, only regretting that she had not time to get up classics with the boys, and with great enthusiasm throwing herself into the music, the reading, all the forms of culture with which she had already a certain acquaintance. These pursuits filled up the days which had already seemed very fully occupied, and there were moments when papa, coming home after his business, declared that he felt himself quite "out of it," and lingered in the dining-room after dinner and dozed instead of coming up-stairs. But there is nothing more common than that a man of fifty, a comfortable merchant, after a very comfortable dinner, should take a little nap over his wine, and nobody thought anything of it. Horace was destined for business, to take up the inheritance of his father, which was far too considerable to be let fall into other hands; and though the young man had his dreams like most young men, and now and then had gratified himself with the notion that he was making a sacrifice, for the sake of his family, of his highest aspirations, yet in reality he was by no means dissatisfied with his destination, and contemplated the likelihood of becoming a very rich man, and raising the firm into the highest regions of commercial enterprise, with pleasure and a sense of power which is always agreeable. Naturally, he thought that his father and old Fareham were a great deal too cautious, and did not make half enough of their opportunities; and, that when "new blood," meaning himself, came in, the greatness and the rank of merchant princes, to which they had never attained, would await the house. He had been a little shy at first to talk of this, feeling that ambition of a commercial kind was not heroic, and that his mother and Milly would be apt to gibe.