She is the youngest of five brothers and sisters and was always her _father's favourite_. The father gave her everything she wanted if he possibly could. For instance, if she wanted a new dress and her mother refused it, she could be sure her father would bring her one next time he went to town. The mother died rather early. At twenty-four the patient married the man of her choice, _against her father's wishes_. The father simply disapproved of her choice although he had nothing particular against the man. After the wedding she made her father come and live with them. That seemed a matter of course, she said, since the other relations had never suggested having him with them. The father was a quarrelsome swearer and drunkard. Husband and father-in-law, as may easily be imagined, got on extremely badly together. The patient would always meekly fetch her father spirits from the inn, although this gave rise perpetually to anger and altercations. But she finds her husband "all right." He is a good, patient fellow with only one failing: he does not obey her father enough; she finds that incomprehensible, and would rather have her husband knuckle under to her father. All said and done, father is still father. In the frequent quarrels she always took her father's part. But she has nothing to say against her husband and he is usually right in his protests, but _one must help one's father_. Soon it began to seem to her that she had sinned against her father by marrying against his will, and she often felt, after one of these incessant wrangles, that her love for her husband had quite vanished. And since her father's death it is impossible to love her husband any longer, for his disobedience was the most frequent occasion of her father's fits of raging and swearing. At one time the quarrelling became too painful for the husband, and he induced his wife to find rooms for her father elsewhere, where he lived for two years. During this time husband and wife lived together peaceably and happily. But by degrees the patient began to reproach herself for letting her father live alone; in spite of everything he was her father. And in the end, despite the husband's protests, she fetched him home again because, as she said, in truth she did love her father better than her husband. Scarcely was the old man back in the house before strife was renewed. And so it went on till the father's sudden death.