He sent her back a smile of half-sarcastic acquiescence still; but then Edward Penton went back to his library and shut himself in, and disregarded all the appeals that were made to him during the next hour, to come to tea. First the bell: then Ally tapping softly, “Tea is ready.” Then Anne’s quicker summons, “Mother wants to know if we are to wait for you?” Then the little applicant, whom he was least able to resist, little Mary, drumming very low down upon the lower panels of the door, with a little song of “Fader! fader!” To all this Mr. Penton turned a dull ear. He had been angry--he had been cut to the quick; that his poverty should be thus thrown back upon him--that he should be expected to make merchandise of his inheritance, to give up for money the house of his fathers, the only fit residence for the head of the family! All this gave a sharp and keen pang, and roused every instinct of pride and self-assertion. But when the thrill of solitude and reason fell on all that band of suddenly unchained demons, and he thought of the privations round him--the shabbiness of the house; the damp; the poor wife, who could not now at all hold up her head among the county people; the girls, who were little nobodies and saw nothing; Wat, whose young life was spoiled: and Osy--Osy! about whom some determination must be come to. To see a way out of all that and not to accept it: for pride’s sake to shut up, not only himself, that was a small matter, but the children, to poverty! The fire went out; the inquisitive candles blinked and spied ineffectually, making nothing of the man who sat there wrapped up within himself, his face buried in his hands. He was chilled almost to ice when his wife stole in and drew him away to the fire in the drawing-room, from which the young ones withdrew to make place for him, with looks full of wonder and awe. And then it was, when he had warmed himself and the ice had melted, that he drew the family council together, and laid before them, old and young, the proposal which Alicia Penton had come to make.
Mr. Penton drew his chair toward the fire, which was not a usual thing for him to do. When he felt chilly he went to the book-room, where in the evening there was always a log burning. In the drawing-room it was the rule that nobody should approach the fire too closely; Mr. Penton said it was not good for the children, it gave them bad habits, and it scorched their cheeks and injured their eyes. The moral of which probably was that, as there were so many of them, they could not all get near it, and therefore all had to hold back.