And Papa, "You hear what your mother says, sir. Isn't that enough for
you?"

Mark loved Mamma; but he was not going to do what she wanted. He was
going to do something that would kill her.


IV.

Papa walked in the garden in the cool of the evening, like the Lord God.
And he was always alone. When you thought of him you thought of Jehovah.

There was something funny about other people's fathers. Mr. Manisty, of
Vinings, who rode along Ley Street with his two tall, thin sons, as if he
were actually proud of them; Mr. Batty, the Vicar of Barkingside, who
called his daughter Isabel his "pretty one"; Mr. Farmer, the curate of
St. Mary's Chapel, who walked up and down the room all night with the
baby; and Mr. Propart, who went about the public roads with Humphrey and
Arthur positively hanging on him. Dan said Humphrey and Arthur were tame
and domestic because they were always going about with Mr. Propart and
talking to him as if they liked it. Mark had once seen Mr. Propart trying
to jump a ditch on the Aldborough Road. It was ridiculous. Humphrey and
Arthur had to grab him by the arms and pull him over. Mary was sorry for
the Propart boys because they hadn't got a mother who was sweet and
pretty like Mamma and a father called Emilius Olivier. Emilius couldn't
jump ditches any more than Mr. Propart; but then he knew he couldn't, and
as Mark said, he had the jolly good sense not to try. You couldn't be
Jehovah and jump ditches.

Emilius Olivier was everything a father ought to be.