three hundred and sixty days out of the year in its round wicker-work
nest lined with silk. They started guiltily as I pushed open the
door, but I congratulate myself that I had sense enough--or was it
instinct--to ask no questions.

The last time I had seen them, three hours ago, they had been engaged,
the lights carefully extinguished, cleaning the ground floor windows,
my father the outside, my mother within, and it astonished me the
change not only in their appearance, but in their manner and bearing,
and even in their very voices. My father brought over from the
sideboard the sherry and sweet biscuits and poured out and handed a
glass to my mother, and he and my mother drank to each other, while I
between them ate the biscuits, and the conversation was of Byron's
poems and the great glass palace in Hyde Park.

I wonder am I disloyal setting this down? Maybe to others it shows
but a foolish man and woman, and that is far from my intention. I
dwell upon such trifles because to me the memory of them is very
tender. The virtues of our loved ones we admire, yet after all 'tis
but what we expected of them: how could they do otherwise? Their
failings we would forget; no one of us is perfect. But over their
follies we love to linger, smiling.

To me personally, old Hasluck's coming and all that followed thereupon
made perhaps more difference than to any one else. My father now was
busy all the day; if not in his office, then away in the grim city of
the giants, as I still thought of it; while to my mother came every
day more social and domestic duties; so that for a time I was left
much to my own resources.