“Thank Heaven,” said Captain Roland, “we have never yet had a lawyer in the family, nor a stockbroker, nor a tradesman—ahem!”
I saw that my great ancestor the printer suddenly rose up in that hem.
“Why, uncle, there are honorable men in all callings.”
“Certainly, sir. But in all callings honor is not the first principle of action.”
“But it may be, sir, if a man of honor pursue it! There are some soldiers who have been great rascals!”
My uncle looked posed, and his black brows met thoughtfully. “You are right, boy, I dare say,” he answered, somewhat mildly. “But do you think that it ought to give me as much pleasure to look on my old ruined tower if I knew it had been bought by some herring-dealer, like the first ancestor of the Poles, as I do now, when I know it was given to a knight and gentleman (who traced his descent from an Anglo-Dane in the time of King Alfred) for services done in Aquitaine and Gascony, by Henry the Plantagenet? And do you mean to tell me that I should have been the same man if I had not from a boy associated that old tower with all ideas of what its owners were, and should be, as knights and gentlemen? Sir, you would have made a different being of me if at the head of my pedigree you had clapped a herring-dealer,—though, I dare say, the herring-dealer might have been as good a man as ever the Anglo-Dane was, God rest him!”
“And for the same reason I suppose, sir, that you think my father never would have been quite the same being he is if he had not made that notable discovery touching our descent from the great William Caxton, the printer.”
My uncle bounded as if he had been shot,—bounded so incautiously, considering the materials of which one leg was composed, that he would have fallen into a strawberry-bed if I had not caught him by the arm.
“Why, you—you—you young jackanapes!” cried the Captain, shaking me off as soon as he had regained his equilibrium. “You do not mean to inherit that infamous crotchet my brother has got into his head? You do not mean to exchange Sir William de Caxton, who fought and fell at Bosworth, for the mechanic who sold black-letter pamphlets in the Sanctuary at Westminster?”
“That depends on the evidence, uncle!”