But as every great man has his enemies, the opinion of a few malcontents went for nothing in the general consensus of admiration for one who was generally regarded as among the pillars of Abchester society, and an honor to the city.
"It is high time you did something, Jerry," his wife said to him one morning after their three daughters had left the breakfast-table.
"In what way, Eliza?" Mr. Brander said, looking up from his newspaper; "it seems to me I do a good deal."
"You know what I mean," she said, sharply. "You know you promised me a hundred times that you would give up all this miserable business and settle down in the county. The girls are growing up, Mary has just left Girton and is of an age to go into society."
"She may be of age," Mr. Brander said, with an irritability unusual to him, "but it strikes me that society is the last thing she is thinking of. We made a mistake altogether in giving way to her and letting her go to that place; she has got her head full of all sorts of absurd ideas about woman's mission and woman's duties, and nonsense of that sort, and has got out of hand altogether. You have not a shadow of influence over her, and I can't say that I have much more. Thank goodness her sisters don't take after her in any way."
"Well, that is all true," Mrs. Brander said, "and you know we have agreed on that subject for a long time, but it is no answer to my question. I have been content to live all these years in this miserable dull place, because I was fool enough to believe your promise that you would in time give up all this work and take a position in the county."
"To some extent I kept my promise," he said. "There is not a week that we don't drive half-a-dozen miles, and sometimes a dozen, to take part in a dull dinner."
"That is all very well so far as it goes, but we simply go to these dinners because you are the family lawyer and I am your wife."
"Well, well, you know, Eliza, that I was in treaty for the Haywood's Estate when that confounded mine that I had invested in went wrong, and fifteen thousand were lost at a blow—a nice kettle of fish we made between us of that."
"We," she repeated, scornfully.