“Don’t come to any hasty decision,” said Mrs. Penton, hurriedly; “don’t let it be settled by impulse, children, which is what you are so ready to do.”
“Surely,” said Walter, “when it’s a mere matter of amusement, impulse is as good a way of deciding as another. I say ‘Not if I know it,’ and that is all I mean to say.”
“And, unless you say I’m to go, mother, I think like Wat,” said Ally, with unusual courage.
“Children, children! In the first place it’s not amusement, and your cousin has never asked you before. She is a great deal richer, a great deal better off than we are. Stop a little, Ally and Wat. I don’t say that as if being rich was everything; but it is a great deal. You will meet better society there than anywhere else. And even though your father is going to part with Penton, you never can separate yourselves from it. We shall be called Pentons of Penton always, even though we never enter the house.”
“Mother,” said Wat, “you don’t feel perhaps as I do; that is the best of reasons why I should never enter the house. So long as I was the heir, if they had chosen to ask me it might have been my duty; but _now_--” cried Wat, his voice rising as if into a salvo of artillery. Unutterable things were included in that “now.”
“Now,” said his mother, “because we are giving up, because we are leaving the place, so to speak, it is now much more necessary than ever it was. Your cousins have done nothing that is wrong. They don’t mean to injure you; they are doing a very natural and a very sensible thing. Oh, I am not going to argue the question all over again; but unless you wish to insult them, to show that you care nothing for them, that their advances are disagreeable to you, and that you don’t want their kindness--”
“Mother,” said Walter, “not to interrupt you, that is exactly what I want to do.”
And Ally had her soft face set. It did not seem that the little face, all movable and impressionable, could have taken so fixed a form, as if it never would change again.
“You want to insult the people, Walter, who are, to begin with, your own flesh and blood.”
“Cousins--and not full cousins--are scarcely so near as that,” said Anne, with an air of impartial calm.
“To insult anybody is bad enough, if they were strangers to you--if they were your enemies. What can be nearer than cousins except brothers and sisters? I say Mrs. Russell Penton is your own flesh and blood, and I don’t think it is very nice of you, on a subject which I must know better than you do, to contradict me. Your father calls Sir Walter uncle. How much nearer could you be? And if you live long enough, Wat, you will be Sir Walter after him. In one sense it is like being grandson to the old gentleman, who lost his own sons, as you know well enough. And is it he you would like to insult, Wat?”