Encouraged by this, Mr. Rowland began to tell her his experiences with the children; but by some means it came about that, he could not tell how, their faults got slurred over, and their good qualities magnified in his hand. How did it happen? He could not tell. He had Marion’s impertinent little _minois_ before him every word he said, yet he managed to give an inoffensive saucy look to Marion--a saucy look which fathers do not dislike, though mothers may object to it. And then the boy-- “Archie disarms me,” he said, “because I can’t help seeing in him his mother’s eyes. I’m afraid he’s a dour fellow and sullen, and you can’t be expected to be mollified as I am. It takes away my anger when I look at him. And yet I had cause to be angry.” “Tell me,” she said. And then Mr. Rowland told the story, beginning at the apparition of the groom with his question about the dougs, and ending with Archie’s defence of his aunt, who had taken his money from him, against the father who had given it. As he told this, it seemed to himself less bad as an indictment against Archie than he had supposed. What was it, after all, that the boy had done? The enormity disappeared as it was put into words. And Evelyn sat smiling, from time to time shaking her head. “It appears to me,” she said, “that if Archie was wrong, as no doubt he was, Archie’s father was also a little to blame.” “Do you think so?” he said eagerly. He was glad to think that perhaps this might be so. “You would not like him to be disloyal, not for twenty bank-notes? He might have swallowed the injury to himself of having that money flung in his face--” “Injury!”--Mr. Rowland’s countenance fell. She put her hand upon his, smiling--“Yes, Sir Stern Father. That’s not your rôle, James: you were born to be a most indulgent father, giving in to them in everything. And you must henceforward take up your right rôle, and let me be the repressive influence.” He took her hands between both his. It was not a very strong support, so far as physical force went, and yet for the first time James Rowland felt their soft fingers close upon his in a way that expressed not their usual soft gentleness, but strength. He felt himself suddenly holding on to that hand as if it were his sheet anchor, which indeed it was. “To tell the truth,” he said, “I think perhaps I looked at them through what I supposed were your eyes, Evelyn, seeing how unlike they were to you, how little worthy to live with you, to have the rank of your children. It was that, at all events, made me hard upon poor little May. It’s not her fault if she is more like Jane Brown than she is like a lady, or anything that had even been near you.” “Whom should she be like but the person who has brought her up? I am delighted to hear that they are so loyal. I would not have that changed for anything in the world.”