The Bank was his passion and his life.
When at fifty, to the astonishment of many, he married, the City merely said:
"He must have an heir to carry on the Bank."
Mrs. Silver was a semi-aristocratic woman of limited intelligence, suppressed ambition, and sound limbs. It was the latter characteristic which won her a husband. He was not such a bad judge of make and shape as his father would have had the world believe; and as usual Brazil Silver's judgment proved good. In the appointed time his wife fulfilled her function, and gave him the son he asked of her.
CHAPTER XII
The Eton Man
Jim Silver grew up neither his father's son nor his mother's.
"He's a throw-back—to his grandfather," said old Sir Evelyn.
And in fact from the first the lad's soul hankered after the broad lands of Leicestershire rather than the counting-house in Threadneedle Street.
His happiest days were spent as a child on his grand-dad's farm, amid the great horses, and sweet-breathed kine, and golden stacks.