“Thou will do nothing of that kind. Thy Aunt Josepha is a very peculiar woman. We heard from the Wilsons that she hed fairly joined the radicals and was heart and soul with the Cobden set. In her rough, broad way she said to Mrs. Wilson, that steam and iron and red brick had come to take possession of England and that men and women who could not see that were blind fools and that a pinch of hunger would do them good. She even scolded father in her letter two weeks ago, and father her eldest brother. Think of that! I was shocked, and father felt it far more than I can tell thee. Why!—he wouldn’t hev a mouthful of lunch, and that day we were heving hare soup; and him so fond of hare soup.”
“I remember. Did father answer that letter?”
“I should think he did. He told Josepha Temple a little of her duty; he reminded her, in clear strong words, that he stood in the place of her father, and the head of the Annis family, and that he had a right to her respect and sympathy.”
“What did Aunt Josepha say to that?”
“She wrote a laughable, foolish letter back and said: ‘As she was two years older than Antony Annis she could not frame her mouth to ‘father’ him, but that she was, and always would be, his loving sister.’ You see Josepha Temple was the eldest child of the late squire, your father came two years after her.”
“Did you know that Dick had been staying with her for a week?”
“Yes. Dick wrote us while there. Father is troubled about it. He says Dick will come home with a factory on his brain.”
“You must stand by Dick, mother. We are getting so pinched for money you know, and Lydia Wilson told me that everyone was saying: ‘Father was paying the men’s shortage out of his estate.’ They were sorry for father, and I don’t like people being sorry for him.”
“And pray what has Lydia Wilson to do with thy father’s money and business? Thou ought to have asked her that question. Whether thou understands thy father or not, whatever he does ought to be right in thy eyes. Men don’t like explaining their affairs to anyone; especially to women, and I doan’t believe they iver tell the bottom facts, even to themselves.”
“Mother, if things come to the worst, would it do for me to ask Jane for money?”