Lawrence’s awakened pity was rapidly passing into unspeakable disgust. He had come home prepared to divide his savings among these relatives, as being his own flesh and blood: but he was not prepared to find them throwing themselves upon him like a pack of wolves, intent upon nothing but the horrible emulation which of them could bite the largest piece out of him, and each utterly unconcerned whether the rest got any thing at all. It cost him something to say "Sister" to this wretched creature—not because she was poor,—Lawrence would never have felt that—but because she was vulgar and slovenly, disgusting alike in mind and body. He controlled himself, however, and passing by the too evident spirit of her speech, asked what she could tell him of the other members of the family. Emmot’s communicativeness cooled manifestly. She professed that she knew nothing of the others, and Lawrence had to remind her what she had just said. After a little fencing she admitted that she knew where nearly all of them were. Mariot was living about two miles from Usk, and her husband had been a miner; he was dead, and she made a living by plaiting straw. One of her sons was quite old enough to work—a fact on which Emmot laid great stress; her husband had been a freeman, and none of the family were serfs except herself, which was an enormous advantage: and Joan’s husband was a serf, so that she and her family were kept at their master’s cost, and needed nothing whatever,—another enormous advantage; and she had only two children. And once more the eight children of the illogical Emmot were paraded rhetorically before Lawrence. He gave her a handsome donation, over which she grumbled sorely, and he turned away sick at heart. Lawrence’s next work was to visit his father, who lived a day’s journey away, with his son Simon and his family. Nicholas showed some interest in his youngest son, and some slight affection for him; and he did not ask for money—an omission fully made up by Simon’s wife. Simon himself proved the least changed of any of the family. Grim and surly as far back as Lawrence could recollect him, he was grim and surly still. Lawrence left another donation here, and coming back, went a little out of his way to call upon his sister Joan. If this lady had fewer children than her sister, she supplied the gap by a larger quantity of grumbling. When he left her—having had hard work to get away—Lawrence really wondered if she could have been more abusive had he refused her a penny. It was with a sensation of utter disgust with the whole concern that he went to pay his last visit, to his sister Mariot.