"I suppose your mother can do nothing with him." This was spoken in a tone of conviction.

She always felt that, if she had had Hiram to deal with, she would have been fully as successful with him as she thought she had been with Charles Whitney.

She did not appreciate the fundamental difference in the characters of the two men.

Both were iron of will; but there was in Whitney--and not in Hiram--a selfishness that took the form of absolute indifference to anything and everything which did not directly concern himself--his business or his physical comfort.
Thus his wife had had her way in all matters of the social career, and he would have forced upon her the whole responsibility for the children if she had not spared him the necessity by assuming it.

He cheerfully paid the bills, no matter what they were, because he thought his money's power to buy him immunity from family annoyances one of its chief values.