It was 'Mr. Thorpe' here and 'Mr. Thorpe' there, all over the place. Ladies of title, mind you--all to myself at breakfast two days running. And such ladies--finer than silk. Oh, it's clear as daylight--I was intended for a fashionable career."She smiled in a faint, passive way. "Well--they say 'better late than never,' you know." "And after all, IS it so very late?" he said, adopting her phrase as an expression of his thought. "I'm just turned forty, and Ifeel like a boy. I was looking at that 'Peerage' there, the other day--and do you know, I'm sixteen years younger than the first Lord Plowden was when they made him a peer?
Why he didn't even get into the House of Commons until he was seven-and-forty.""You seem to have the Plowden family on the brain,"she commented.
"I might have worse things. You've no idea, Lou, how nice it all is. The mother, Lady Plowden--why she made me feel as if I was at the very least a nephew of hers.
And so simple and natural! She smiled at me, and listened to me, and said friendly things to me--why, just as anybody might have done. You'll just love her, when you know her."Louisa laughed in his face. "Don't be a fool, Joel,"she adjured him, with a flash of scornful mirth.
He mingled a certain frowning impatience with the buoyancy of his smile. "Why, of course, you'll know her,"he protested. "What nonsense you're thinking of! Do you suppose I'm going to allow you to mess about here with second-hand almanacs, and a sign in your window of 'threepence in the shilling discount for cash,' while I'm a millionaire? It's too foolish, Lou. You annoy me by supposing such a thing!""There's no good talking about it at all," she observed, after a little pause. "It hasn't come off yet, for one thing. And as I said the other night, if you want to do things for the children, that's another matter.
They're of an age when they can learn whatever anybody chooses to teach them.""Where are they now?" he asked. Upon the instant another plan began to unfold itself in the background of his mind.
"They're both at Cheltenham, though they're at different places, of course. I was recommended to send Julia there--one of our old customers is a Governor, or whatever it's called--and he got special terms for her.
She was rather old, you know, to go to school, but he arranged it very nicely for her--and there is such a good boys' college there, it seemed the wisest thing to send Alfred too.
Julia is to finish at Christmas-time--and what I'm going to do with her afterward is more than I know.""Is she pretty?" the uncle of Julia enquired.
"She's very nice," the mother answered, with vague extenuation in her tone. "I don't know about her looks--she varies so much. Sometimes I think she's pretty--and then again I can't think it. She's got good features, and she holds herself well, and she's very much the lady--rather too much, I think, sometimes--but it all depends upon what you call pretty. She's not tall, you know. She takes after her father's family. The Dabneys are all little people."Thorpe seemed not to care about the Dabneys. "And what's Alfred like?" he asked.
"He wants to be an artist!" There was a perceptible note of apprehension in the mother's confession.
"Well--why shouldn't he--if he's got a bent that way?"demanded Thorpe, with reproof in his tone. "Did you want him to be a shop-keeper?""I should like to see him a doctor," she replied with dignity.
"It was always my idea for him."
"Well, it's no good--even as an idea," he told her.
"Doctors are like parsons--they can't keep up with the times.
The age is outgrowing them. Only the fakirs in either profession get anything out of it, nowadays. It's all mystery and sleight-of-hand and the confidence trick--medicine is--and if you haven't got just the right twist of the wrist, you're not in it. But an artist stands on his merits.
There is his work--done by his own hands. It speaks for itself. There's no deception--it's easy enough to tell whether it's good or bad. If the pictures are good, people buy them. If they're bad, people don't buy them.
Of course, it won't matter to Alfred, financially speaking, whether his pictures sell well or not. But probably he'd give it up, if he didn't make a hit of it.
