Mr. Joscelyn returned from the Club to lunch, which was not very usual for him. After all, at the bottom of his heart, there was a vein of kindness in him for the boy whom he had trained. After his little anger wore off, Harry’s face, so tragical in its expression, came back to his mind with a mixture of amusement and compassion. It was tragic-comic to Mr. Henry; but there was no comic element in it to the young man. He came home by no means intending to put himself in the breach, and replace for Harry’s benefit that thousand pounds of his mother’s money, which the young fellow had calculated upon; but still with an impulse of kindness. A thousand pounds! That was a pretty sort of fortune for the woman who married Joscelyn of White House. It made him laugh with angry scorn. Little insignificant woman, whose pretty face even was nothing out of the way, a kind of prettiness that faded, a sort of parson’s daughter’s gentility, not even anything that could be called beauty, or that would last. Mr. Henry Joscelyn had been absent from the district, he had not yet retired from “the world,” as he called it, when his nephew married, and he had never known before exactly how bad a match it was. Ralph was a clown to be sure, in himself worthy no better fate; but the head of the Joscelyns, Mr. Henry reflected with a bitter smile, might certainly have been worth something more than a thousand pounds. It was ridiculous, it was exasperating; he did not wonder that Ralph had been angry when his son had asked for this paltry thousand pounds. Considered as a fee for the privilege of entering the Joscelyn family, it was ridiculously inadequate--and as a fortune! He laughed aloud as he crossed the street to the Club, an angry laugh. After all it was not much wonder that Ralph had deteriorated. A wife with a faded face, no ancestors, and a thousand pounds--poor Ralph! if he had not been so insufferable his uncle would have been sorry for him. And now here was the boy asserting a claim to this enormous fortune; probably Mrs. Joscelyn herself thought it a great sum of money, enough to set up Harry in business, and do a great deal for him. Tck-tck! how mean and petty it all was, not like the old ways of the house, which were not small whatever they were. The Joscelyns in their day had gone into debt in a princely manner; and they had married money in their day; but to come to such a point that the mother’s great fortune of a thousand pounds was worth fighting about, between father and son! Tck-tck, tck-tck, what a wonderful thing it was!