Deep down in their secret hearts all the Spuffler’s relations had felt that his permanent failure to get on in the world was a kind of disgrace to themselves. They resented it, but as a rule kept quiet about it “for the sake of poor Lavinia.” My aunt was always “poor Lavinia,” when mentioned by her family. Before strangers, needless to say, they helped him to keep up his pretense of importance and spoke of him with respect. But the thought that a man who had intermarried with them, should have lowered his wife to the keeping of a boarding-house rankled. Even as a child I was conscious that my close attachment to my uncle Obad was regarded with disapprobation. He was the Ishmael of our tribe. At first none of his relatives would believe in his mushroom prosperity. Perhaps, they did not want to believe in it; it would entail the sacrifice of life-long prejudices. They pooh-poohed it as the most extravagant example of his fantastic spuffling. On my return home for the summer holidays I very soon became aware of an atmosphere of half-humorous contempt whenever his name was mentioned. Once when I took up the cudgels for him, declaring that he was really a great man, the Snow Lady patted my hand gently, calling me “a blessed young optimist.” My father, who rarely lost his temper, told me I was speaking on a subject concerning which I was profoundly ignorant. On a visit to Charity Grove I was grieved to find that even Aunt Lavinia was skeptical. Despite the jingling of money in my uncle’s pockets, she insisted on living in the old proud hand-to-mouth fashion, making the spending capacity of each penny go its furthest. Her house was still understaffed in the matter of servants--servants who could be procured at the lowest wages. She still did her shopping in the lower-class districts, where men cried their wares on the pavement beneath flaring naphtha-lamps and slatternly women elbowed your ribs and mauled everything with dirty hands before they purchased. Here housekeeping could be contrived on the smallest outlay of capital. Uncle Obad might go to fashionable tailors; she clothed herself in black, because it wore longest and could be turned. She listened to his latest optimisms a little wearily with a sadly smiling countenance, as a mother might listen to the plans for walking of a child hopelessly crippled. She had heard him speak bravely so many, many times, and had been disappointed, that she had permanently made up her mind that she would have to go on earning the living for both of them all her life.