Inspired, perhaps, by his household gods, George was facing life bravely, and won a minor place in Anne’s good graces when he and Madge produced a firstborn son, who had the remarkable quality of looking exactly like the infant Samuel, whose name he bore. But George had not, in her opinion, deserved Sam’s generosity to this extent. “You’re over-good to them,” she said. “You’ve made a man and woman of a pair of wastrels, and I’d let them alone to make their own way now.” “Do you think it will be much of a way?” asked Sam. “They’re the sort that need help.” “Aye,” she said, “they’ll lean on you all right. They’re good at leaning.” “Well,” said Sam, drawing himself up. “Let them lean.” “Sam,” said Anne, “I’m not fond, but if I told you what I think of you for this, you’d have the right to call me fond and foolish. I like you very well, my son. You’re the strong man helping and supporting the weak.” She finished suddenly and a thought shamefacedly. She had praised him openly and considered it a weakness in her. Sam put a hand on her shoulder. It was not demonstrative, but his gesture was full of understanding, and Anne turned rapidly away, shaking him off almost with rudeness, taking very earnestly to her business of clearing away their tea-things. Sam watched appreciatively through the corner of his eye. He relished praise from Anne, even when, as now, it was not strictly merited. The strong in Sam’s philosophy did not support the weak, but the weak the strong. He was confirmed in his belief that women could not understand business. This, however, he reminded himself, was not pure business, it was conscience-money, which ought not to be unconscionably reproductive: so he bought George a hand-cart, ladder, bucket and leathers, and exacted from him not more than ten per cent, on his capital expenditure. In Travers’ business Sam found opportunities of pushing George. A client took a house, and Sam would suggest with a nicely casual air that the windows needed cleaning. He would, to save the client trouble, then offer to send a man round, so that George’s connection waxed, and he prospered to the tune of two amazing pounds a week, till the restless Sam began to widen his view of George’s potentialities. His eye for the main chance had always a useful squint which could see money round the corner as well as in the straight high road, and he thought that George, with his outfit of ladders, could see his talent for height in other ways than window cleaning. There was, for example, bill-posting, a trade whose mysteries Sam deemed it not beyond George’s capabilities to learn.