He seemed to take a kind of satisfaction in disgusting them, and driving them nearly mad, while they were so irritably sensitive at the age of fourteen or fifteen.

So that Arthur, who was growing up when his father was degenerate and elderly, hated him worst of all.
Then, sometimes, the father would seem to feel the contemptuous hatred of his children.
"There's not a man tries harder for his family!" he would shout.

"He does his best for them, and then gets treated like a dog.

But I'm not going to stand it, I tell you!" But for the threat and the fact that he did not try so hard as he imagined, they would have felt sorry.

As it was, the battle now went on nearly all between father and children, he persisting in his dirty and disgusting ways, just to assert his independence.