George was flushed. I could see that he felt his father’s taunt. I believe that he would gladly have given up the reading; but his mother’s feeble tone seemed to touch his heart, and still retaining his hold of the volume, he said, “If you please, I would rather try a little longer; I will try to read better, if you will let me.”
“There’s the post!” exclaimed Mrs. Ellerslie, with a start, as the double rap was suddenly heard.
George saw that his mother was anxious: he sprang out of the room in a moment.
Mr. Ellerslie rose, as if too impatient to be able to sit still; his wife clasped her trembling hands; but neither of them uttered a word till George returned with a letter.
“The Bristol post-mark!” muttered Mr. Ellerslie, as he broke the seal.
“George, my son,” said the lady, “go to the dining-room for a few minutes. You can take the book with you, if you like.”
George instantly obeyed, without speaking; and Mrs. Ellerslie fixed her blue eyes, with a look of intense anxiety, on the changing countenance of her husband.
“There—read it,” he exclaimed, when he had finished perusing the letter; “what do you say, Eliza, to that?” and he threw himself again on his chair.
“He writes kindly of George,” said the mother, after looking over the first page of the letter,—“‘_I was much pleased with what I saw of your boy last year,—I don’t forget that he is my namesake._’” The poor mother’s face brightened up.
“It does not seem that he declines to assist you,” said the lady, still anxiously endeavouring to make out the crabbed handwriting before her; “on the contrary,” he writes, ‘_I shall have a large sum at your disposal, such as I think will remove every difficulty._’”
“There’s an _if_ to that. Read on a little farther.”
“Oh, Edward!” exclaimed the lady, almost dropping the letter, “can he ask us to give up our boy—our dear son?”
“My George! oh! no, no, no!—we can never, never consent to that!”
“Why, you see, Eliza,” said her husband, speaking rapidly, “if I have not assistance now, all will be ruin—I shall have no means of supporting my family. Perhaps this is the best thing for George himself—”
“I can hardly think it,” said the mother, with a look of intense pain. “Hardcastle gives us to understand that the separation from our boy must be ‘_complete—final_’—these are his very words—that ‘_George must not look to two fathers or two homes_—’”