“It’s quite true, papa. She has just dresses upon dresses, and last winter she made down one of hers for me--me that it all belonged to! She said I was too young to have silks for myself. I never put on the horrid old thing! I would have thought shame for your daughter, papa!” “There are worse things than wearing old dresses that my daughter might be ashamed of,” he said hastily. But then he repeated to himself that it was not her fault: it was his fault--his alone, that he had neglected his children, and how could he ever make up to them for that unfortunate beginning? To please Archie they drove to a cricket match going on in a field in a remote part of the town, where Mr. Rowland’s carriage made a great sensation, with the coachman in the hotel livery. Rowland himself was a little ashamed of the turn-out. But even Archie, though much simpler than his sister, jumped down from the carriage with a swagger, and strolled across the ground with an ineffable air of splendour and superiority, which made his father--oh, his poor father!--so conscious of all these weaknesses, laugh. It was a rueful laugh; and to see Marion sit and bridle and plume herself, with little touches of re-arrangement to her hat and her tie and her gloves, looking as well as she knew how, as a fine lady and patroness of the humble but lively scene should look, was such a painful amusement as the poor man could never forget. He could not help being amused, but it was rueful fun. And then he said to himself, repressing at once the levity and the pain, that had he never left them, he would have been as proud of them as Jane was, and never would have found out the imperfections.