"What, not gone yet?" said he.
"No, not yet; I'm going now."
"You and I, Mary, have always affected a good deal of indifference as to money, and all that sort of thing."
"I won't acknowledge that it has been an affectation at all," she answered.
"Perhaps not; but we have often expressed it, have we not?"
"I suppose, uncle, you think that we are like the fox that lost his tail, or rather some unfortunate fox that might be born without one."
"I wonder how we should either of us bear it if we found ourselves suddenly rich. It would be a great temptation—a sore temptation. I fear, Mary, that when poor people talk disdainfully of money, they often are like your fox, born without a tail. If nature suddenly should give that beast a tail, would he not be prouder of it than all the other foxes in the wood?"
"Well, I suppose he would. That's the very meaning of the story. But how moral you've become all of a sudden at twelve o'clock at night! Instead of being Mrs Radcliffe, I shall think you're Mr Æsop."
He took up the article which he had come to seek, and kissing her again on the forehead, went away to his bed-room without further speech. "What can he mean by all this about money?" said Mary to herself. "It cannot be that by Sir Louis's death he will get any of all this property;" and then she began to bethink herself whether, after all, she would wish him to be a rich man. "If he were very rich, he might do something to assist Frank; and then—"
There never was a fox yet without a tail who would not be delighted to find himself suddenly possessed of that appendage. Never; let the untailed fox have been ever so sincere in his advice to his friends! We are all of us, the good and the bad, looking for tails—for one tail, or for more than one; we do so too often by ways that are mean enough: but perhaps there is no tail-seeker more mean, more sneakingly mean than he who looks out to adorn his bare back with a tail by marriage.