“This comes pretty heavily upon me, you know,” said old Frank. “I got her into that headlight company, and she fooled me about her resources as much as she did your Uncle George. I was never your father’s adviser, if you remember, and when the insurance was turned over to her some other lawyer arranged it—probably your father’s. But it comes pretty heavily on me, and I feel a certain responsibility.”
“Not at all. I’m taking the responsibility.”
And George smiled with one corner of his mouth. “She’s not your aunt, you know, sir.”
“Well, I’m unable to see, even if she’s yours, that a young man is morally called upon to give up a career at the law to provide his aunt with a favourable opportunity to play bridge whist!”
“No,” George agreed. “But I haven’t begun my ‘career at the law’ so it can’t be said I’m making any considerable sacrifice. I’ll tell you how it is, sir.” He flushed, and, looking out of the streaked and smoky window beside which he was sitting, spoke with difficulty. “I feel as if—as if perhaps I had one or two pretty important things in my life to make up for. Well, I can’t. I can’t make them up to—to whom I would. It’s struck me that, as I couldn’t, I might be a little decent to somebody else, perhaps—if I could manage it! I never have been particularly decent to poor old Aunt Fanny.”
“Oh, I don’t know: I shouldn’t say that. A little youthful teasing—I doubt if she’s minded so much. She felt your father’s death terrifically, of course, but it seems to me she’s had a fairly comfortable life—up to now—if she was disposed to take it that way.”
“But ‘up to now’ is the important thing,” George said. “Now is now—and you see I can’t wait two years to be admitted to the bar and begin to practice. I’ve got to start in at something else that pays from the start, and that’s what I’ve come to you about. I have an idea, you see.”
“Well, I’m glad of that!” said old Frank, smiling. “I can’t think of anything just at this minute that pays from the start.”
“I only know of one thing, myself.”
“What is it?”