“Who says not?”
“The governor himself—Sir Brook—old Mills—everybody, in fact. They have held a committee of the whole house on it. I think Nicholas was present too; and it has been decided that as I am very much given to idleness, bitter beer, and cigars, I ought not to be anywhere where these ingredients compose the chief part of existence. Now the Cape is precisely one of these places; and if you abstract the idleness, the bitter beer, and the tobacco, there is nothing left but a little Hottentotism, which is neither pleasant nor profitable. Voted, therefore, I am not to go to the Cape. It is much easier, however, to open the geography books, and show all the places I am unfit for, than to hit upon the one that will suit me. And so I am going up to Dublin to-morrow with Sir Brook to consult—I don't well know whom, perhaps a fortune-teller—what 's to be done with me. All I do know is, I am to see my grandfather, and to wait on the Viceroy, and I don't anticipate that any of us will derive much pleasure from either event.”
“Oh, Tom! what happiness it would be to me if grandpapa—” She stopped, blushed, and tried in vain to go on.
“Which is about the least likely thing in the world, Lucy,” said he, answering her unspoken sentence. “I am just the sort of creature he could n't abide,—not to add that, from all I have heard of him, I 'd rather take three years with hard labor at the hulks than live with him. It will do very well with you. You have patience, and a soft forgiving disposition. You 'll fancy yourself, besides, Heaven knows what of a heroine, for submitting to his atrocious temper, and imagine slavery to be martyrdom. Now, I could n't. I 'd let him understand that I was one of the family, and had a born right to be as ill-tempered, as selfish, and as unmannerly as any other Lendrick.”
“But if he should like you, Tom? If you made a favorable impression upon him when you met?”
“If I should, I think I 'd go over to South Carolina, and ask some one to buy me as a negro, for I 'd know in my heart it was all I could be fit for.”
“Oh, my dear, dear Tom, I wish you would meet him in a different spirit, if only for poor papa's sake. You know what store he lays by grandpapa's affection.”
“I see it, and it puzzles me. If any one should continue to ill-treat me for five-and-twenty years, I 'd not think of beginning to forgive him till after fifty more, and I 'm not quite sure I 'd succeed then.”
“But you are to meet him, Tom,” said she, hopefully. “I trust much to your meeting.”
“That 's more than I do, Lucy. Indeed, I 'd not go at all, except on the condition which I have made with myself, to accept nothing from him. I had not meant to tell you this; but it has escaped me, and can't be helped. Don't hang your head and pout your lip over that bad boy, brother Tom. I intend to be as submissive and as humble in our interview as if I was going to owe my life to him, just because I want him to be very kind and gracious to you; and I 'd not wish to give him any reason for saying harsh things of me, which would hurt you to listen to. If I only knew how—and I protest I do not—I'd even try and make a favorable impression upon him, for I 'd like to be able to come and see you, Lucy, now and then, and it would be a sore blow to me if he forbade me.”