So they lived together in peace and prosperity till they had seven children, and then, one fine autumn, Mrs. John Mortimer persuaded her father-in-law to do up the house, so far as papering and painting were concerned. She then persuaded John to take a tour, and went herself to the sea-side with her children.
From this journey she did not return. Their father had but just gone quite out of her reach when the children took scarlet fever, and she summoned their grandfather to her aid. In this, her first great anxiety and trouble, for some of them were extremely ill, all that she had found most oppressive in his character appeared to suit her. He pleased and satisfied her; but the children were hardly better, so that he had time to consider what it was that surprised him in her, when she fell ill herself, and before her husband reached home had died in his father's arms.
All the children recovered. John Mortimer took them home, and for the first six months after her death he was miserably disconsolate. It was not because they had been happy, but because they had been so very comfortable. He aggravated himself into thinking that he could have loved her more if he had only known how soon he should lose her; he looked at all their fine healthy joyous children, and grieved to think that now they were his only.
But the time came when he knew that he could have loved her much more if she would have let him; and when he had found out that, womankind in general went down somewhat in his opinion. He made up his mind, as he thought, that he would not marry again; but this, he knew in his secret heart, was less for her sake than for his own.
Then, being of an ardently affectionate nature, and having now no one to restrain it, he began to study his children with more anxious care, and consider their well-being with all his might.
The children of middle-aged people seem occasionally to come into the world ready tamed. With a certain old-fashioned primness, they step sedately through the paths of childhood. So good, so easy to manage, so--uninteresting?
The children of the very young have sometimes an extra allowance of their father's youth in their blood. At any rate the little Mortimers had.