"Did she blow you up?"
"Down, father, down. I feel very small, I can tell you."
Janet was of too cheerful a temperament to be sad very long. She and her father habitually exchanged death-cell jests, and even her present gloom was not too thick to be dispelled with a quip. Her father burst into a loud and hearty laugh which he moderated considerably on remembering that he still had his wife to face. His camel-like virtues, which had carried him tolerably far in business—he was manager of a small branch of the Wheat Exchange Bank—had not saved him from being a thorough nincompoop at home.
Mr. Barr had the form of a patrician but the spirit of an obedient slave. Janet despised him for his complete submission to his wife, yet she had one bond of sympathy with him. Though he dared not raise hand or voice against the system of vetoes and taboos under which the Barr family lived, he disliked the system and understood her hatred of it. Janet often wondered whether he was not the passive carrier of some rebellious British strain which, in herself, took the shape of active insurgency against Mrs. Barr's American passion for denying the body and mortifying the soul.
"Mother is waiting for you upstairs," she said, trying to feel sorry for him. "She means to give you a scathing address on the moral failings of your youngest daughter."
"I suppose I'll get a piece of her mind, too."
"Depend upon it. The same old piece that passeth understanding."
"Well, it's all in the day's work—it's family life," said the old gentleman, trying to keep up a brave front.
He shuffled off with a rueful smile.
Janet almost felt ashamed of her malice as she watched his reluctant steps and pictured his terror of her mother. His kindliness and good nature had once endeared him to her. But she could not check a growing contempt for his weakness of character. It was clearer to her every day that her mother's cruel bigotry had not been half so fraught with tragic consequences as her father's spinelessness and moral cowardice.