Up till now, the Maxwells ought to have presented the appearance of just an ordinary family. Viewed as a group, they were entirely ordinary. Mr. Maxwell was a wholesale stationer, only peculiar in that he was a thin man who behaved as though he were burly, for he was genial and boisterous and rollicking, and when he lost his temper he bellowed. As a thin man, he should have been slightly sarcastic and querulous and timid in society. But otherwise he kept strictly to precedent--he wore a gold watch-chain dragged loosely across his middle; he caught his train to the city nearly every morning, and missed it about once a week; he was proud of his sons, and kept them short of pocket-money; he loved his wife, and gave her no pocket-money at all. Oh, there was nothing _outré_ about Mr. Maxwell! He was even far more polite to strangers than to his own family, and always remembered to ask Aunt Lavvy if she liked the outside piece, when he carved. “No favourites” was his motto where the children were concerned--yet Hal was the eldest son, and of this his sentimentality made great parade, treating him sonorously, as though he were the “heir” of which a great family had been anxiously expectant, to carry on the tradition and title ... the eldest son! Hal had received no concrete privileges in the paternal will; all seven inherited exactly alike; nevertheless--the eldest son! In the bosom of abstract emotion it ranked with “God Save the King” and “Gentlemen, the Ladies!” “Good gracious, no, my husband doesn’t want Hal to go into the business. William, our baby, is going into the business. He’s so bloomin’ steady.” It was painful when Mrs. Maxwell used words like “bloomin’,” but when she was a handsome girl she was admired for it--and habits stick. “Hal’s going to the ’Varsity to read for the Law; and Bunny--no, we’re afraid he’ll run into debt if we send him to Oxford or Cambridge. Bunny’s very wild--he’s only fit for the Navy really. But my husband says it’s too late, so I suppose he’ll end up in the Colonies, poor old boy.” For the Maxwells were ordinary even to the possession of the usual black sheep in their midst. To continue with the greys: after Father--but a long way after--Mother. Father and Mother still upheld each other’s authority in the old perfunctory way: “You must obey your mother,” “You mustn’t disturb your father,” ... but they made no definite stand against the increasing freedoms and privileges of the new generation. On the whole, they were tolerant, because it was at the moment the national habit to be tolerant and not violently to enforce the precepts of right and wrong....