“No,” said Hodson, “but something terrible has happened. I don’t know what it is. He is crying. Your mother is with him, and she is crying, too.”
As Jack entered the room he saw that what Hodson had told him was true. He did not know what to say, and stood expectantly waiting for his father or mother to speak.
His father arose and came towards him. Placing his hand on Jack’s shoulder, he said: “What I feared has come to pass. Your brother Carolus is dead, and you are the heir to the Earldom of Noxton and its estates. I hope, my son, that you will prove worthy of them both.”
CHAPTER VI.
DUAL LIVES.
“Do you see that ‘that’?”
The speaker was Mr. B. Gorham Potts, head reader for the great London publishing firm of Johnson, Johnson, Smythe & Johnson, and as he uttered the words he laid a page-proof upon the table before the young lady who sat busily engaged in writing.
Mr. Potts had been christened Benjamin Gorham, the Benjamin being in honour of a maternal uncle who had gone to South Africa, and, rumour said, had accumulated a large fortune. But when the said uncle died and no news came of an inheritance for any members of the Potts family, both father and mother agreed that a mistake had been made at the baptismal font. No change, however, had been made in young Benjamin’s name. He began work in a printing-office at the early age of fourteen and for a period of sixteen years had been called “Ben” by every one in the establishment, from the senior proprietor to the smallest errand boy.
When at the age of thirty he secured a position in the publishing house, in the composition of which there were so many Johnsons that he decided a change must and should be made.
“Maria,” he said to his wife, “I am going to work for a very large corporation. I am to hold a dignified position and for that reason I think I should bear a dignified name.”