The Solitary Summer

His wife, of course, was ailing, but already his eldest child, a girl of ten, took a great deal of the work off her mother's shoulders, poor baby. He was perfectly natural, and said in the simplest way that if the choice were to fall on him it would relieve him of many grinding anxieties; whereupon I privately determined that if the choice did not fall on him the Man of Wrath and I would be strangers from that hour. "Have you been worrying him with questions about his principles?" I asked, buttonholing the Man of Wrath as he came out from a private conference with him. "Principles? My dear Elizabeth, how can he have any on that income?" "If he is not a Conservative will you let that stand in his way, and doom that little child to go on taking work off other people's shoulders?" "My dear Elizabeth," he protested, "what has my decision for or against him to do with dooming little children to go on doing anything? I really cannot be governed by sentiment." "If you don't give it to him--" and I held up an awful finger of warning as he retreated, at which he only laughed.