"It's jolly difficult to love him sometimes," he admitted sadly.
She seemed to gain courage.
"Frank," she said, "have you ever actually felt as affectionate about him as one ought?"
He shook his head.
"He never struck me as wanting that kind of thing. I've respected him, of course."
"Oh, so have I—enormously."
"Well," said Frank, "that's all he wanted out of us, I fancy."
"Still," she murmured, "we might have given him something more."
"'Pon my word, I don't know what he'd have done with it."
She could not but admit that that, in fact, was just the difficulty. The cultivation of sentiment had not been included in Mr. Walkingshaw's youthful curriculum. His father before him had enjoyed but two forms of relaxation from his daily burden of obligations to clients and Calvin—a glass of good claret, and a primitive form of golf played with a missile of feathers in the interstices of a tract of whins. His mother had not even these amusements. Small wonder Heriot Walkingshaw found it a little difficult to sympathize with soft creatures who demanded hot-water bottles at night and affection by day. Jean had a weakness for both, and had only managed to obtain the hot bottle—and even that was a secret.