If you'll be so good as give me your keys, my dear, I'll attend to all this sort of thing in future.' From that time, Miss Murdstone kept the keys in her own little jail all day, and under her pillow all night, and my mother had no more to do with them than I had.
My mother did not suffer her authority to pass from her without a shadow of protest.

One night when Miss Murdstone had been developing certain household plans to her brother, of which he signified his approbation, my mother suddenly began to cry, and said she thought she might have been consulted.
'Clara!' said Mr.Murdstone sternly.

'Clara! I wonder at you.' 'Oh, it's very well to say you wonder, Edward!' cried my mother, 'and it's very well for you to talk about firmness, but you wouldn't like it yourself.' Firmness, I may observe, was the grand quality on which both Mr.and Miss Murdstone took their stand.

However I might have expressed my comprehension of it at that time, if I had been called upon, I nevertheless did clearly comprehend in my own way, that it was another name for tyranny; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil's humour, that was in them both.

The creed, as I should state it now, was this.
Mr.Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to be so firm as Mr.
Murdstone; nobody else in his world was to be firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his firmness.