"I don't know that there's any crying need that he should do anything. My own idea for him, perhaps, would be the Army, but I wouldn't dream of forcing it on him against his will.
I had a bitter enough dose of that, myself, with father.
I'd try to guide a youngster, yes, and perhaps argue with him, if I thought he was making a jack of himself--but I wouldn't dictate. If Alfred thinks he wants to be an artist, in God's name let him go ahead.
It can be made a gentlemanly trade--and the main thing is that he should be a gentleman."Louisa had listened to this discourse with apathetic patience. "If you don't mind, I don't know that I do,"she said when it was finished. "Perhaps he wouldn't have made a good doctor; he's got a very quick temper.
He reminds me of father--oh, ever so much more than you do.
He contradicts everything everybody says. He quite knows it all.""But he's a good fellow, isn't he?" urged Thorpe. "I mean, he's got his likable points? I'm going to be able to get along with him?""I didn't get along with him very well," the mother admitted, reluctantly, "but I daresay with a man it would be different. You see, his father was ill all those four years, and Alfred hated the shop as bad as you did, and perhaps in my worry I blamed him more than was fair.
I want to be fair to him, you know."
"But is he a gentleman? That puts it in a word,"Thorpe insisted.
"Oh, mercy yes," Louisa made ready answer. "My only fear is--whether you won't find him too much of a gentleman."Thorpe knitted his brows. "I only hope we're talking about the same thing," he said, in a doubtful tone.
Before she could speak, he lifted his hand.
"Never mind--I can see for myself in ten minutes more than you could tell me in a lifetime. I've got a plan.
I'm going on the Continent in a few days' time, to stay for three or four months. I've got nothing special to do--just to travel about and see things and kill time--I shall probably go to Italy and Switzerland and Paris and the Rhine and all sorts of places--and it occurred to me that I'd take the two youngsters with me.
I could get acquainted with them, that way, and they'd be company for me. I've been lonesome so long, it would feel good to have some of my own flesh and blood about me--and I suppose they'd be tickled to death to go.""Their schooling and board are paid for up to Christmas,"Mrs. Dabney objected, blankly.
"Bah!" Thorpe prolonged the emphatic exclamation into something good-natured, and ended it with an abrupt laugh.
"What on earth difference does that make? I could go and buy their damned colleges, and let the kids wear them for breastpins if I wanted to. You said the girl was going to quit at Christmas in any case. Won't she learn more in four months travelling about on the Continent, than she would trotting around in her own tracks there at Cheltenham?
"And it's even more important for the boy. He's of an age when he ought to see something of the world, and I ought to see something of him. Whatever he's going to do, it's time that he began getting his special start for it."He added, upon a luminous afterthought: " Perhaps his seeing the old Italian picture galleries and so on will cure him of wanting to be an artist."The mother's air displayed resigned acquiescence rather than conviction. "Well--if you really think it's best,"she began, "I don't know that I ought to object.
Goodness knows, I don't want to stand in their way.
Ever since you sent that four hundred pounds, it hasn't seemed as if they were my children at all.
They've scarcely listened to me. And now you come, and propose to take them out of my hands altogether--and all I can say is--I hope you feel entirely justified.
And so, shall I write them to come home? When do you think of starting? Julia ought to have some travelling clothes.""I can wait till you get her ready--only you must hurry up about it."Remembering something, he took out his cheque-book, and spread it on the desk. "I will give you back that thirty," he said, as he wrote, "and here's a hundred to get the youngsters ready. You won't waste any time, will you? and if you want more tell me."A customer had entered the shop, and Thorpe made it the occasion for leaving.
His sister, looking after her brother with the cheque in her hand, was conscious of a thought which seemed to spell itself out in visible letters before her mental vision.
"Even now I don't believe in him," the impalpable legend ran.
