“Yes, the heir. Lionel now succeeds to a splendid fortune and the baronetcy.”
“He told me once that his father had made some sort of compact with his eldest son about cutting off the entail, in case he should desire to do it. In fact, he gave me to understand that he was n't a favorite with his father, and that, if by any course of events he were likely to succeed to the estate, it was more than probable his father would use this power, and merely leave him what he could not alienate,—a very small property that pertained to the baronetage.”
“With reference to what did he make this revelation to you? What had you been talking of?”
“I scarcely remember. I think it was about younger sons,—how hardly they were treated, and how unfairly.”
“Great hardship truly that a man must labor! not to say that there is not a single career in life he can approach without bringing to it greater advantages than befall humbler men,—a better and more liberal education, superior habits as regards society, powerful friends, and what in a country like ours is inconceivably effective,—the prestige of family. I cannot endure this compassionate tone about younger sons. To my thinking they have the very best opening that life can offer, if they be men to profit by it; and if they are not, I care very little what becomes of them.”
“I do think it hard that my elder brother should have fortune and wealth to over-abundance, while my pittance will scarcely keep me in cigars.”
“You have no right, sir, to think of his affluence. It is not in the record; the necessities of your position have no-relation to his superfluities. Bethink you of yourself, and if cigars are too expensive for you, smoke cavendish. Trafford was full of this cant about the cruelty of primogeniture, but I would have none of it. Whenever a man tells me that he deems it a hardship that he should do anything for his livelihood, I leave him, and hope never to see more of him.”
“Trafford surely did not say so.”
“No,—certainly not; there would have been no correspondence between us if he had. But I want to see these young fellows showing the world that they shrink from no competitorship with any. They have long proved that to confront danger and meet death they are second to none. Let me show that in other qualities they admit of no inferiority,—that they are as ready for enterprise, as well able to stand cold and hunger and thirst, to battle with climate and disease. I know well they can do it, but I want the world to know it.”
“As to intellectual distinctions,” said Tom, “I think they are the equals of any. The best man in Trinity in my day was a fellow-commoner.”