The Captain lounged towards the window, and, leaning listlessly against the wall, opened the epistle.
“You have not written to her lately, then?” asked he, as he perused the opening sentence.
“I am ashamed to say I have not; every day I made a resolution; but somehow--”
“Is all this anything strange or new?” broke in the Captain. “I 'm certain I have forty letters from my mother with exactly the same story. In fact, before I ever broke the seal, I 'd have wagered an equal fifty that the potatoes had failed, the bogs were flooded, the roads impassable, and the people dying in thousands; and yet, when spring came round, by some happy miracle they were all alive and merry again!”
“Read on,” said Martin, impatiently, and barely able to control himself at this heartless commentary.
“Egad! I 'd have sworn I had read all this before, except these same suggestions about not exacting the rents, building hospitals, and so forth; that _is_ new. And why does she say, 'Don't write by deputy'? Who _was_ your deputy?”
“Kate Henderson has written for me latterly.”
“And I should say she 's quite equal to that sort of thing; she dashes off my mother's notes at score, and talks away, too, all the time she 's writing.”
“That is not the question before us,” said Martin, sternly.
“When I sent for you to read that letter, it was that you might advise and counsel me what course to take.”
“If you can afford to give away a year's income in the shape of rent, and about as much more in the shape of a donation, of course you 're quite free to do it. I only wish that your generosity would begin at home, though; for I own to you I 'm very hard-up at this moment.” This the Captain spoke with an attempted jocularity which decreased with every word, till it subsided into downright seriousness ere he finished.
“So far from being in a position to do an act of munificence, I am sorely pressed for money,” said Martin.
The Captain started; the half-smile with which he had begun to receive this speech died away on his lips as he asked, “Is this really the case?”
“But how, in the name of everything absurd--how is this possible? By what stratagem could you have spent five thousand a year at Cro' Martin, and your estate was worth almost three times as much? Giving a very wide margin for waste and robbery, I 'd say five thousand could not be made away with there in a twelvemonth.”