obey their eldest sister with a willing obedience, keeping down their
effervescence within doors, and letting it off only out of doors, or in the
out-houses.

When Constance began to recover a little, then the sacredness of that
chamber began to show itself more powerfully, radiating on all sides a yet
stronger influence of peace and goodwill. It was like a fountain of gentle
light, quieting and bringing more or less into tune all that came within
the circle of its sweetness. This brings me to speak again of my lovely
child. For surely a father may speak thus of a child of God. He cannot
regard his child as his even as a book he has written may be his. A man's
child is his because God has said to him, "Take this child and nurse it
for me." She is God's making; God's marvellous invention, to be tended
and cared for, and ministered unto as one of his precious things; a young
angel, let me say, who needs the air of this lower world to make her wings
grow. And while he regards her thus, he will see all other children in the
same light, and will not dare to set up his own against others of God's
brood with the new-budding wings. The universal heart of truth will thus
rectify, while it intensifies, the individual feeling towards one's own;
and the man who is most free from poor partisanship in regard to his own
family, will feel the most individual tenderness for the lovely human
creatures whom God has given into his own especial care and responsibility.
Show me the man who is tender, reverential, gracious towards the children
of other men, and I will show you the man who will love and tend his own
best, to whose heart his own will flee for their first refuge after God,
when they catch sight of the cloud in the wind.