land and sea, then faced about with an impatient exclamation.

On Sundays all the week-day regime of the family was deranged, and
breakfast was a movable feast, to be had any time after seven or
before half-past nine. As Victorine was pouring the ice-water,
Mr. Bessemer himself came in, and addressed himself at once to his
meal, without so much as a thought of waiting for the others.

He was a little round man. He wore a skull-cap to keep his bald
spot warm, and read his paper through a reading-glass. The
expression of his face, wrinkled and bearded, the eyes shadowed by
enormous gray eyebrows, was that of an amiable gorilla.

Bessemer was one of those men who seem entirely disassociated from
their families. Only on rare and intense occasions did his
paternal spirit or instincts assert themselves. At table he
talked but little. Though devotedly fond of his eldest daughter,
she was a puzzle and a stranger to him. His interests and hers
were absolutely dissimilar. The children he seldom spoke to but
to reprove; while Howard, the son, the ten-year-old and terrible
infant of the household, he always referred to as "that boy."

He was an abstracted, self-centred old man, with but two hobbies--
homoeopathy and the mechanism of clocks. But he had a strange way
of talking to himself in a low voice, keeping up a running, half-
whispered comment upon his own doings and actions; as, for
instance, upon this occasion: "Nine o'clock--the clock's a little
fast. I think I'll wind my watch. No, I've forgotten my watch.
Watermelon this morning, eh? Where's a knife? I'll have a little
salt. Victorine's forgot the spoons--ha, here's a spoon! No, it's