“It is all very well to laugh,” he said to his wife afterwards, “but how is he ever to live upon that?”
“Dear Edward, it’s not like you to take their fun in earnest,” said the mother. “The poor boy has such spirits--and then it’s always a beginning.”
“I am afraid his spirits are too good. If he would only take life a little more seriously----”
“Why should he?” said Mrs. Sandford, taking high ground; “it is his happiest time. If he wanted to marry and set up for himself it might be different. But they have no cares--as yet. We ought to be thankful they are all so happy at home. Few young men love their home like our boys. We ought to be very thankful,” she repeated with a devout look upon her upturned face. It took the words out of his mouth. He could not say any more.
But he kept on thinking. The time was passing away with great rapidity--far more quickly than it had ever done. Sunday trod on the heels of Sunday, and the months jostled each other as they flew along. Presently it was Jack’s birthday, and there was a dance and a great deal of affectionate pleasure; but when Mr. Sandford remembered how old the boy was, it gave him a shock which none of the others felt. At that age he himself had been Jack’s father, he had laid the foundation of his reputation, and was a rising man. If they did not live at home and had not everything provided for them, what would become of these boys? It gave him a sort of panic to think of it. In the very midst of the dance, when he was himself standing in the midst of a little knot of respectable fathers watching the young ones enjoying themselves, this thought overtook him and made him shiver.
“Getting on, I hear, very well at the bar,” one of the gentlemen said.
“He is not making very much money as yet,” replied Mr. Sandford.
“Oh, nobody does that--at first, at least; but so long as he has you to fall back upon,” this good-natured friend said, with a nod of his head.
Mr. Sandford could not make any reply. He kept saying to himself, “Two guineas--two guineas--he could not live very long on that.” And Harry had not even two guineas. It fretted him to have this thought come back at all manner of unlikely times. He did not seem able to shake it off. And Mrs. Sandford was always on the defensive, seeing it in his eyes, and making responses to it, speaking at it, always returning to the subject. She dwelt upon the goodness of the boys, and their love of their home, and how good it was for the girls to have them, and how nobody made their mark all at once, “except people that have genius like you,” she said with that wifely admiration and faith which is so sweet to a man. What more could he say?