Though it might have been regarded as certain beforehand, that seven
children would differ each from each other in at least as many ways, it
never seems to have occurred to the father that one inflexible system
for them all could hardly be wise or comfortable. But, indeed, like so
many parents similarly trained and circumstanced, it is questionable
whether he ever realised their possession of separate individualities
till they were pleaded for by the mother, or made, as on this evening,
surprising assertion of themselves.

Though this system of mediation had been responsible for the only
disagreements in their married life, there had never been any long or
serious difference between husband and wife; for, in spite of natures so
different, they loved each other with that love which is given us for
the very purpose of such situations, the love that no strain can snap,
the love that reconciles all such disparities. Though Mary Mesurier had
also been brought up among Nonconformists, and though the conditions of
her youth, like her husband's, had been far from adequate to the
demands of her nature, yet her religion had been of a gentler character,
broadening instead of narrowing in its effects, and had concerned itself
less with divinity than humanity. Her home life, if humble, had been
genial and rich in love, and there had come into it generous influences
from the outer world,--books with more of the human beat in them than is
to be found in sermons; and particularly an old travelled grandfather
who had been regarded as the rolling stone of his family, but in whom,
at all events, failure and travel had developed a great gentleness and
understanding of the human creature, which in long walks and talks with
his little grand-daughter somehow passed over into her young character,
and proved the best legacy he could have left her. Through him too was
encouraged a native love of poetry, of which in her childhood her memory