Cyril, when he came into the world, had come with only half a welcome.  No mother and father ever met over his cradle and looked at him together, wondering if it were “well with the child.”  When he was old enough to have his red-gold hair curled, and a sash tied around his baby waist, he was sometimes taken downstairs, but he always fled to his mother’s or his nurse’s knee when his father approached.  How many times he and his little sister Olive had hidden under the stairs when father had called mother down to the study to scold her about the grocer’s bill!  And there was a nightmare of a memory concerning a certain birthday of father’s, when mother had determined to be gay.  It was just before supper.  Cyril, clad in his first brief trousers, was to knock at the study door with a little purple nosegay in his hand, to show his father that the lilac had bloomed.  Olive, in crimson cashmere, was to stand near, and when the door opened, present him with her own picture of the cat and her new kittens; while mother, looking so pretty, with her own gift all ready in her hand, was palpitating on the staircase to see how the plans would work.  Nothing could have been worse, however, in the way of a small domestic tragedy, than the event itself when it finally came off.

Cyril knocked.  “What do you want?” came from within, in tones that breathed vexation at being interrupted.

“Knock again!” whispered Mrs. Lord.  “Father doesn’t remember that it’s his birthday, and he doesn’t know that it’s you knocking.”

Cyril knocked again timidly, but at the first sound of his father’s irritable voice as he rose hurriedly from his desk, the boy turned and fled through the kitchen to the shed.

Olive held the fort, picture in hand.

“It’s your birthday, father,” she said.  “There’s a cake for supper, and here’s my present.”  There was no love in the child’s voice.  Her heart, filled with passionate sympathy for Cyril, had lost all zest for its task, and she handed her gift to her father with tightly closed lips and heaving breast.

“All right; I’m much obliged, but I wish you would not knock at this door when I am writing,—­I’ve told you that before.  Tell your mother I can’t come to supper to-night, but to send me a tray, please!”

As he closed the door Olive saw him lay the picture on a table, never looking at it as he crossed the room to one of the great book-cases that lined the walls.

Mrs. Lord had by this time disappeared forlornly from the upper hall.  Olive, aged ten, talked up the stairs in a state of mind ferocious in its anger.  Entering her mother’s room she tore the crimson ribbon from her hair and began to unbutton her dress.  “I hate him!  I hate him!” she cried, stamping her foot.  “I will never knock at his door again!  I’d like to take Cyril and run away!  I’ll get the birthday cake and fling it into the pond; nothing shall stop me!”.  Then, seeing her mother’s white face, she wailed, as she flung herself on the bed:  “Oh, mother, mother,—­why did you ever let him come to live with us?  Did we have to have him for a father?  Couldn’t you help it, mother?”