All these, and various other annoyances, though Randal was too sensible not to perceive their insignificance, still galled and mortified the listening heir of Rood. They showed, at least, even to the well-meant officiousness of the Hazeldeans, the small account in which the fallen family was held. As he sat still on the moss-grown pales, gloomy and taciturn, his mother standing beside him, with her cap awry, Mr. Leslie shamblingly sauntered up, and said in a pensive, dolorous whine,
“I wish we had a good sum of money, Randal, boy!”
To do Mr. Leslie justice, he seldom gave vent to any wish that savoured of avarice. His mind must be singularly aroused, to wander out of its normal limits of sluggish, dull content.
So Randal looked at him in surprise, and said, “Do you, Sir?—why?”
“The manors of Rood and Dulmansberry, and all the lands therein, which my great-grandfather sold away, are to be sold again when Squire Thornhill’s eldest son comes of age, to cut off the entail. Sir John Spratt talks of buying them. I should like to have them back again! ‘T is a shame to see the Leslie estates hawked about, and bought by Spratts and people. I wish I had a great, great sum of ready money.” The poor gentleman extended his helpless fingers as he spoke, and fell into a dejected revery.
Randal sprang from the paling, a movement which frightened the contemplative pigs, and set them off squalling and scampering. “When does young Thornhill come of age?”
“He was nineteen last August. I know it, because the day he was born I picked up my fossil of the sea-horse, just by Dulmansberry church, when the joy-bells were ringing. My fossil sea-horse! It will be an heirloom, Randal—”
“Two years—nearly two years—yet—ah, ah!” said Randal; and his sister now appearing, to announce that tea was ready, he threw his arm round her neck and kissed her. Juliet had arranged her hair and trimmed up her dress. She looked very pretty, and she had now the air of a gentlewoman,—something of Randal’s own refinement in her slender proportions and well-shaped head.
“Be patient, patient still, my dear sister,” whispered Randal, “and keep your heart whole for two years longer.” The young man was gay and good-humoured over his simple meal, while his family grouped round him. When it was over, Mr. Leslie lighted his pipe, and called for his brandy-and-water. Mrs. Leslie began to question about London and Court, and the new king and the new queen, and Mr. Audley Egerton, and hoped Mr. Egerton would leave Randal all his money, and that Randal would marry a rich woman, and that the king would make him a prime minister one of these days; and then she should like to see if Farmer Jones would refuse to send his wagon for coals! And every now and then, as the word “riches” or “money” caught Mr. Leslie’s ears, he shook his head, drew his pipe from his mouth, “A Spratt should not have what belonged to my great-great-grandfather. If I had a good sum of ready money! the old family estates!” Oliver and Juliet sat silent, and on their good behaviour; and Randal, indulging his own reveries, dreamily heard the words “money,” “Spratt,” “great-great-grandfather,” “rich wife,” “family estates;” and they sounded to him vague and afar off, like whispers from the world of romance and legend,—weird prophecies of things to be.
Such was the hearth which warmed the viper that nestled and gnawed at the heart of Randal, poisoning all the aspirations that youth should have rendered pure, ambition lofty, and knowledge beneficent and divine.