But you let yourself be put upon by anybody." Mr.Simeon was silent.

He knew that to defend himself would be to court a wrangle, reproaches, tears perhaps, all unseemly before the children; and, moreover, what his wife said was more than half deserved.
"Daddy, why _don't_ you write a play ?" demanded the five-year-old Agatha.

"And then mammy would have a carriage, and I'd go to a real boarding-school with canaries in the window like they have at Miss Dickinson's." The meal over, Mr.Simeon stole away to the Cathedral.

He was unhappy; and as he passed through Friars' Gateway into the Close, the sight of the minster, majestical above its green garth, for once gave no lift to his spirit.

The great central tower rose against a sky of clearest blue, strong and foursquare as on the day when its Norman builders took down their scaffolding.