The ex-"professor" of penmanship had been always prone to dream. No
dull and sordid reality, no hopeless sorrow had yet awakened him. Nor
had his wife's death been more real than the half-strangled anguish of
a dreamer, tossing in darkness. As for the children, they paid no more
attention to Ledlie than they might have to a querulous but
superannuated dog.

Jack, now fifteen, still dawdled at school, where his record was not
good. Perhaps it was partly because he had no spending money, no
clothing to maintain his boyish self-respect, no prospects of any
sort, that he had become sullen, uncommunicative, and almost loutish.

Nobody governed him; his father was unqualified to control anybody or
anything; his mother was dead.

With her death went the last vestige of any tie that had held the boy
to the home anchorage--of any feeling of responsibility concerning
the conduct expected and required of him.

He shirked his studies, came home only to eat and sleep, remained out
late without explanation or any home interference, except for the
constant disputes and quarrels with Doris and Catharine, now aged
respectively fourteen and thirteen.

To Athalie he had little to say. Perhaps he did not realise it but he
was slightly afraid of her. And it was from her that he took any pains
at all to conceal his irregularities.

Once, coming in from school, she had found the house deserted, and
Jack smelling of alcohol just slouching out of the bar.