Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/17

 impetuous little boy—not hard, as he has since become. . . I am fourteen years his senior; and, from the time when our dear mother died to the time when I married Arthur, I was wife and mother and sister at the Hall. On me devolved what, in spite of the socialists, I venture to call the great tradition of English life. . . Lying in bed here, one could not help saying “if anything goes amiss, am I leaving the world better than I found it?” Under my own vine and fig-tree I had been a good wife to Arthur and a good mother to Will; and, if there had not always been some one of good intentions to smoothe over difficulties with the family on both sides. . . Blessed are the peacemakers, though I have sometimes wondered whether I did right in even tolerating my brother-in-law Spenworth. It is probably no news to you that he very much wanted to marry me, but I always felt that even Cheniston, even the house in Grosvenor Square, even his immense income would not compensate me for a husband whom I could never trust out of my sight. Arthur may be only the younger brother, I very soon found that the old spacious days were over; but with him one does know where one is, and I have never grudged poor Kathleen Manorby my leavings. There indeed is a lesson