Yet Jemmy—or so at least Mrs. Clapham had been known to insist—would have been right enough but for Emma. He was never a star, of course, either in looks or brains, but he was right enough as men went, seeing that in most cases they didn’t go far. It was hardly credible that he should have turned into the mad skeleton of his later years, peering at people from behind the ferns, or, later still, from a room upstairs. When he wasn’t peering he was emptying water-jugs upon callers’ heads, or throwing things at the passers-by. It seemed an eternity that he had leered and peered, until finally his amusements had come to an end behind the shut door of a coffin-lid.... Well, that had been Stephen’s father—not much of a father for anybody, if it came to that, but least of all for one so inexpressibly in need of help. Yet, even at his worst (and it was a most unpleasant worst), it was unanimously agreed that he was nothing to Emma. Mrs. Clapham could remember how they had all been afraid of her, even as a girl, because of that thing in her mind which watched and hid. Tibbie, too, had complained that Emma spied on her while she slept, just as her own babies had cried themselves sick about it, later on. But the child out of the House of Laughter had not troubled herself about Emma for very long; quite early the obsession had turned into interest in Poor Stephen. Even in those days she used to talk to her mother about the little boy who was always afraid; later still, when they were going to the same school; and later again, when they were grown up and gone to work. And then suddenly the happy, chattering voice had stopped of its own accord, dumb in that last, sweet, waiting stillness before the rushing confession of love.... Upon that desolate Poor Stephen, sunk in his misery and mental murk, Tibbie’s choice had had the effect of a silver clarion in the dark. The conferring of her love was like the conferring of a kingly robe and crown. The change in him was so startling that it was almost as if one saw the gold and the jewels shimmer about him as he moved. Tibbie was a strength-giver, just as Emma was a strength-stealer, but she did a great deal more for Stephen than that. She drew out of him by degrees the courage that was in himself, as well as the graces and charm which make a man loved wherever he goes. The long-latent strength, crushed and shrivelled in youth, had gathered itself at last into that splendid battle-deed; but when the time came for her to lose him, as she had known it would have to come, it was the fact that he had been loved by his fellows that Tibbie had valued most.