"I think I have made it plain to you, Kingsley," said Mr. Manners, when he had finished the recital, "that I owe everything to myself. I make no boast of it, and I have no doubt there are numbers of men as capable and clever as I am, only they have either not had the courage to launch out or have missed their opportunities. Now, my lad, I am sensible of my own deficiencies; I do not deceive myself by saying that I am as good as others with whom my money places me on an equality; I am a contractor, nothing more, and every shoemaker to his last. I shall stick to mine, and make more money. If I entered Parliament, which I could do without difficulty, I should have to sit mumchance, and play a silent part, unless something in my own particular line started up; and that would be once in a blue moon. Now taking a back seat in anything in which I am engaged would not suit me; I am accustomed to be master, and master I intend to continue to be. If I were a good speaker the matter would be different; I could carry all before me, though I am ignorant of Greek and Latin. When I was a lad I did not have what you call ambition; I took a pride in making sensible contracts which would bring me in a profit, and I crept along steadily, never dreaming that I should ever reach my present position. But the case is altered now, and I have a real ambition--not directly for myself, but for you. I have no expectation that you will disappoint me."
"I will endeavor not to do so, father."
"That is a good lad. You will be one of the richest men in the country, but I want you to be something more; I want you to be one of the most influential. I want people to say as I walk along; 'There goes the father of the prime-minister.'"
"That is looking a long way ahead," said Kingsley, considerably startled by this flight.
"Not a bit too far; it can be worked up to, and with your gifts it shall be. I have already told you that it matters little to me whether you are a Conservative, or a Liberal, or a Radical; that is your affair. If you are prime-minister and a Radical it will show that Radicalism is popular. I stop short of Socialism, mind you."
"So do I."
"Good. There is nothing nowadays that a man with a good education and a long purse cannot accomplish. I have the long purse, but not the education. I can talk sensibly enough to you here in a room, and in fairly good English, thanks to your mother and to my perseverance, but put me in the House of Commons and ask me to make a long speech upon large matters of state, and I should make a fool of myself. Therefore it is impossible I could ever become prime-minister."
"It is not every man who would speak so plainly and disparagingly of himself."
"Perhaps not, but I happen to know the length of my tether; I happen to know what I am fitted for and what I am not. I don't want you to suppose that I am making a sacrifice; nothing of the kind. I keep my place; you work up to yours; then I shall be perfectly satisfied. I have had this in my mind for years, and instead of making you a contractor I have made you a gentleman. That is what other fathers have done, whose beginnings have been as humble as mine. New families are springing up, my boy, to take the place of the old; you, Kingsley, shall found a family which shall become illustrious, and I shall be content to look on and say: 'This is my doing; this is my work.' We shall show these old lords what new blood can do."
"Why, father," said Kingsley, laughing despite the uneasy feeling that was creeping over him, "you are a Radical."