Since the death of his wife, he had known no more definite happiness than his own pitifully negative contentment whenever such a state of affairs appeared to him to prevail in his house. He would have thought it a disloyalty to Eleanor's memory to suppose that he could ever be happy again.
The children might be so—in fact he wished them to be so, and was bewildered and hurt when his own lack of proportion created an atmosphere to which Lily, at least, reacted at a cost infinitely greater to herself than either of them realized.
Kenneth, ten years younger, was different.
The "difference" of Kenneth, in fact, was becoming positively appalling, to his entirely humourless father.
Kenneth disregarded the code with blatant impunity, and that not from a spirit of defiance, but apparently from sheer constitutional inability to regard it seriously.
He obviously did not believe that grown-up people were infallible.
Remonstrance never made him cry, nor imputations of heartlessness and disloyalty.
He never willingly sat upon anybody's knee after he was three years old, but would say cheerfully: "I'd rather not, thank you," as he walked away.
He held opinions of his own, and expressed them freely.
He did not instantly relinquish them when Philip gravely and gently told him that he was an ignorant little boy and that Father always knew best.