Always, until now, I've had hopes of the next one, and thought that it would turn out better, like a woman with her babies.

I seem to have given up expecting that now.

It isn't, you know, being always hard-up that I mind so much, although that, mind you, isn't pleasant, no, by Jehoshaphat, it isn't.

But we would like now and again to find that other people have enjoyed what one hoped they _would_ enjoy.

But I don't know, they always seem too old for children and too young for grown-ups--my stories, I mean." It was one of the hardest traits in Mr.Lasher's character, as Hugh well realised, "to rub it in" over a fallen foe.