Mr. Scarborough's Family Part 30

"It is very hard, Harry."

"Therefore I call him an idiot in preference to calling him a knave. But I am not going to be dropped out of the running in that way, just in deference to his will. I shall see him. Unless they lock him up in his bedroom I shall compel him to see me."

"What good would that do, Harry? That would only set him more against you."

"You don't know his weakness."

"Oh yes, I do; he is very weak."

"He will not see me, because he will have to yield when he hears what I have to say for myself. He knows that, and would therefore fain keep away from me. Why should he be stirred to this animosity against me?"

"Why indeed?"

"Because there is some one who wishes to injure me more strong than he is, and who has got hold of him. Some one has lied behind my back."

"Who has done this?"

"Ah, that is the question. But I know who has done it, though I will not name him just now. This enemy of mine, knowing him to be weak,--knowing him to be an idiot, has got hold of him and persuaded him. He believes the story which is told to him, and then feels happy in shaking off an incubus. No doubt I have not been very soft with him,--nor, indeed, hard.

I have kept out of his way, and he is willing to resent it; but he is afraid to face me and tell me that it is so. Here are the girls come back from Buntingford. Molly, you blooming young bride, I wish you joy of your brewer."

"He's none the worse on that account, Master Harry," said the eldest sister.

"All the better,--very much the better. Where would you be if he was not a brewer? But I congratulate you with all my heart, old girl. I have known him ever so long, and he is one of the best fellows I do know."

"Thank you, Harry," and she kissed him.

"I wish f.a.n.n.y and Kate may even do so well."

"All in good time," said f.a.n.n.y.

"I mean to have a banker--all to myself," said Kate.

"I wish you may have half as good a man for your husband," said Harry.

"And I am to tell you," continued Molly, who was now in high good-humor, "that there will be always one of his horses for you to ride as long as you remain at home. It is not every brother-in-law that would do as much as that for you."

"Nor yet every uncle," said Kate, shaking her head, from which Harry could see that this quarrel with his uncle had been freely discussed in the family circle.

"Uncles are very different," said the mother; "uncles can't be expected to do everything as though they were in love."

"Fancy Uncle Peter in love!" said Kate. Mr. Prosper was called Uncle Peter by the girls, though always in a sort of joke. Then the other two girls shook their heads very gravely, from which Harry learned that the question respecting the choice of Miss Matilda Thoroughbung as a mistress for the Hall had been discussed also before them.

"I am not going to marry all the family," said Molly.

"Not Miss Matilda, for instance," said her brother, laughing.

"No, especially not Matilda. Joshua is quite as angry about his aunt as anybody here can be. You'll find that he is more of an Annesley than a Thoroughbung."

"My dear," said the mother, "your husband will, as a matter of course, think most of his own family. And so ought you to do of his family, which will be yours. A married woman should always think most of her husband's family." In this way the mother told her daughter of her future duties; but behind the mother's back Kate made a grimace, for the benefit of her sister f.a.n.n.y, showing thereby her conviction that in a matter of blood,--what she called being a gentleman,--a Thoroughbung could not approach an Annesley.

"Mamma does not know it as yet," Molly said afterward in privacy to her brother, "but you may take it for granted that Uncle Peter has been into Buntingford and has made an offer to Aunt Matilda. I could tell it at once, because she looked so sharp at me to-day. And Joshua says that he is sure it is so by the airs she gives herself."

"You think she'll have him?"

"Have him! Of course she'll have him. Why shouldn't she? A wretched old maid living with a companion like that would have any one."

"She has got a lot of money."

"She'll take care of her money, let her alone for that.

"And she'll have his house to live in. And there'll be a jointure. Of course, if there were to be children--"

"Oh, bother!"

"Well, perhaps there will not. But it will be just as bad. We don't mean even to visit them; we think it so very wicked. And we shall tell them a bit of our mind as soon as the thing has been publicly declared."

CHAPTER XXIV.

HARRY ANNESLEY'S MISERY.

The conversation which took place that evening between Harry and his father was more serious in its language, though not more important in its purpose. "This is bad news, Harry," said the rector.

"Yes, indeed, sir."'

"Your uncle, no doubt, can do as he pleases."

"You mean as to the income he has allowed me?"

"As to the income! As to the property itself. It is bad waiting for dead men's shoes."

"And yet it is what everybody does in this world. No one can say that I have been at all in a hurry to step into my uncle's shoes. It was he that first told you that he should never marry, and as the property had been entailed on me, he undertook to bring me up as his son."

"So he did."

"Not a doubt about it, sir. But I had nothing to say to it. As far as I understand, he has been allowing me two hundred and fifty pounds a year for the last dozen years."

"Ever since you went to the Charter-house."

"At that time I could not be expected to have a word to say to it. And it has gone on ever since."

"Yes, it has gone on ever since."

"And when I was leaving Cambridge he required that I should not go into a profession."

"Not exactly that, Harry."