The Winterbournes were not gentry, but nourished vague and unfounded traditions of past genteel splendours. They were, however, fairly comfortable middle class. Worcestershire, migrated to Sheffield. Methodist on female side; C. of E. on the Winterbourne side. Young George Augustus—father of our George—was pretty comfortable. His mother was a dominating old bitch who destroyed his initiative and courage, but in the eighties hardly any one had the sense to tell dominating bitch-mothers to go to hell. George Augustus didn’t. At fifteen he wrote a Non-Conformist tract (which was published) expressing nothing but his dear Mamma’s views. He became top of his school, in conformity with dear Mamma’s views also. He did not go to Oxford, as he wanted, because dear Mamma thought it unpractical. And he did pass his examinations as a lawyer, because dear Mamma thought it so eminently right that he should have a profession and that there should be a lawyer in the family. George Augustus was a third son. The eldest son became a Non-Conformist parson, because dear Mamma had prayed for guidance on her marriage night and during her first pregnancy (only she never mentioned such horrid occurrences, even to her husband, but—she had “prayed for guidance”) and it had been revealed to her that her first-born must take up The Ministry. And take it up, poor devil, he did. The second son had a little bit of spunk, and his dear Mamma made him a waster. Remained George Augustus, dear Mamma’s darling chick, who prayed at her knee, and was flogged regularly once a month by dear Papa, because the Scripture says: Spare the rod, spoil the child. Dear Papa had never done anything in particular, lived on his “means,” was generally rather in debt, and spent the last fifteen years of his life praying to the C. of E. God in the garden, while dear Mamma prayed to John Wesley’s God in her bedroom. Dear Mamma admired dear pious Mr. Bright and grand Mr. Gladstone; but dear Papa collected and even read all the works of the Right Hnble the Earl of Beaconsfield, K. G. Still, George Augustus was pretty comfortable. The one thing he wanted in life was to be pretty comfortable. After he became a full-blown solicitor, at the age of twenty-four, a family council was held. Present: Dear Mamma, dear Papa, George Augustus. Nothing formal, _of_ course, just a cosy little family gathering after tea, round the blazing hearth (coal was cheap in Sheffield then), rep curtains drawn, and sweet domestic peace. Dear Papa opened the proceedings: “George, you are now come to man’s estate. At considerable sacrifice, your dear Mamma and I have given you a Profession. You are an Admitted Solicitor, and we are proud—I think we may say ‘proud,’ Mamma?—that we have a legal luminary in the family....” But dear Mamma could not even allow dear Papa the semblance of authority, respected not even the forms of Limited Domestic Monarchy, and cut in: