“I should like that; it sounds very fascinating, all of it. How it submerges at once, too, all the petty cares and contrivances, perpetually asking, 'Can we do this?' 'Dare we do that?' It makes existence the grand, bold, free thing one dreams it ought to be.”
“You 're right there; it does make life very jolly.”
“Are you very rich?” asked she, abruptly.
“No, by Jove! poor as a church mouse,” said he, laughing at the strangeness of the question, whose sincere simplicity excluded all notion of impertinence. “I'm what they call a younger son, which means one who arrives in the world when the feast is over. I have a brother with a very tidy fortune, if that were of any use to me.”
“And is it not the same? You share your goods together, I suppose?”
“I should be charmed to share mine with him, on terms of reciprocity,” said Beecher; “but I 'm afraid he 'd not like it.”
“So that he is rich, and you poor?”
“Exactly so.”
“And this is called brotherhood? I own I don't understand it.”
“Well, it has often puzzled me too,” said Beecher, laughingly; “but I believe, if I had been born first, I should have had no difficulty in it whatever.”