to a male or was directly for, about, or on behalf of a male.

Getting Robert off to school in the morning, for instance. That
was another early picture.

There would be Robert, eating; and there was the entire female
population of the rectory feverishly attending upon Robert while
he ate. Six females, intensely and as if their lives depended upon
it, occupied with one male. Three girls--Anna about sixteen, Flora
fourteen, Hilda twelve--and three grown women, all exhaustingly
occupied in pushing out of the house one heavy and obstinate male
aged about ten! Rosalie used to stand and watch entranced. How
wonderful he was! Where did he go to when at last he was pushed
off? What happened to him? What did he do?

There he is, eating; there they are, ministering. Entrancing and
mysterious spectacle!

Robert, very solid and heavy and very heated and agitated, would
be seated at the table shoving porridge into himself against the
clock. One of his legs, unnaturally flexed backward and outward, is
in the possession of Rosalie's mother who is on her knees mending
a hole in his stocking. The other leg, similarly contorted, is on
the lap of Ellen the cook, who with very violent tugs, as if she
were lashing a box, is lacing a boot on to it. Behind Robert is
Anna, who is pressing his head down with one hand and washing the
back of his neck with the other. In front of him across the table
is Hilda, staring before her with bemused eyes and moving lips and
rapidly counting on drumming fingers. Hilda is doing his sums for
him. Beside him on his right side, apparently engaged in throttling