Mrs. Dorriman: A Novel. Volume 3 of 3

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON: CHAPMAN and HALL Limited 1886
WESTMINSTER: PRINTED BY NICHOLS AND SONS, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET.
Spring struggling through smoke and fog, dingy sparrows playing on the grass, and a careworn face looking upon it all.
The lines left by youth deepen and become more conspicuous in age, and one can generally read the story of the three first decades in the faces of older people. Mrs. Dorriman, suffering in her youth from injustice and a want of affection, bore the marks of both; nothing but her real sweetness of temper had saved her from peevishness, for fretfulness is as much the result of perpetual repression in one feeble by nature, as violence and anger is the outcome of an unchecked temper in youth.
But, as Mrs. Dorriman looked upon the smoky sparrows and the grass showing green under difficulties, she noticed that the birds were contending and not playing, they each wanted a long straw, envied it. Alone they could not lift it, and yet they would not combine their efforts, and after all it had to be left there to the mercy of the wind. Their ineffectual single efforts in so hopeless a cause seemed to the poor little lady typical of humanity, wasting their time struggling for the unattainable, and never seeing how perfectly fruitless are their efforts.
She was roused from this common-place reflection by the entrance of the servant.
Mr. Sandford, better, and busy at his writing-table, had much changed since his last attack. He was rough in manner still, and his speech was imperious because the habit of a lifetime is not easily broken, but in various ways he showed his sister how much he had learned to value her. His own consciousness of not being quite the same—which however he never alluded to openly—the various disappointments he met with in business, the failure of some of his most cherished plans—everything combined to make him cling to his sister as the one object in his life who was always the same, and who never disappointed him.