A VERY ILL-TEMPERED FAMILY.

"Finding, following, keeping, struggling,
Is HE sure to bless?"

_Hymn of the Eastern Church._




CHAPTER I.

A FAMILY FAILING.


We are a very ill-tempered family.

I want to say it, and not to unsay it by any explanations, because I
think it is good for us to face the fact in the unadorned form in
which it probably presents itself to the minds of our friends.

Amongst ourselves we have always admitted it by pieces, as it were, or
in negative propositions. We allow that we are firm of disposition; we
know that we are straightforward; we show what we feel. We have
opinions and principles of our own; we are not so thick-skinned as
some good people, nor as cold-blooded as others.

When two of us quarrelled (and Nurse used to say that no two of us
ever agreed), the provocation always seemed, to each of us, great