It seemed hard to know what he was fitted for. My husband found him work in another office, where so much was not expected of him, and now, he was trying to do his best. Yet none of us felt very hopeful.
He always looked so pleasant and good-tempered, and he was so full of kind-heartedness and thought for others, that it was impossible to blame him. Not one of my children lavished upon me a tithe of Jack’s tenderness. Still he could not learn his multiplication table, or write a decent hand, even for my sake.
“Mother,” Cherry said presently, “I don’t think Cress really believes that father means him to go to Peterson’s. I don’t think he counts it settled.”
Peterson & Co. was the firm to which my husband belonged.
“Does he not?” I asked. “It has been spoken of often enough.”
“Yes, I know,” Cherry answered, rather sorrowfully. “But Cress always says afterwards that it is bosh, and that he won’t go. He says he knows father will not make him. I think Cress has a sort of dream—of going through college and becoming a lawyer—a barrister, he calls it. He says he would get on then, and by-and-by he would be able to support us all.”
“And meantime!” I said. “My dear Cherry, your father’s whole income would not do much more than carry Cress through college. What does he suppose we are all to live on meantime?”
“Cress never seems to understand that money can’t be made to go farther than it can.”
“You must try to make him understand,” I said. “Sisters can do a good deal with their brothers, you know.”
“Not I with Cress, mother. He thinks nothing of anybody who is not clever, and I am so stupid.”