Suddenly Will spoke up: "Father, do you want George and me to leave college?"
"Certainly not, my boy. What would be gained by that? I want you to keep right on just as if I were going to live fifty years more."
George did not say anything. He looked at his father as if he doubted his sanity.
His father noticed the look, and a terrible wave of anguish swept over him as he recalled the part of his vision in which he had seen his oldest son in the gambling room.
Again the prayer he had been silently praying all the morning went up out of his heart: "Almighty God, show me how to use the seven days most wisely."
"Father," said Bess suddenly, "what will you do about Jim and Clara? Did you know they were engaged?"
"Bess!" said Clara passionately. Then she stopped suddenly, and, seeing her father's brow grow dark, she cowered, afraid of what was coming.
But Mr. Hardy looked at the world differently this morning. Twenty-four hours before he would have treated Bessie's remark as he usually treated her surprising revelations of the secrets of the family. He would have laughed at it a little, and sternly commanded Clara to break the engagement, if there was one, at once: for James Caxton was not at all the sort of man Mr. Hardy wanted to have come into the family. He was poor, to begin with. More than all, his father had been the means of defeating Mr. Hardy in a municipal election where a place of influence and honour was in dispute. Mr. Hardy had never forgotten or forgiven it. When he began to see his children intimate with the Caxtons, he forbade their going to the house, with the result already described.
Mr. Hardy looked at Clara and said very tenderly: "Clara, we must have a good talk about this. You know your father loves you and wants you to be happy and——" Mr. Hardy stopped in his emotion, and Clara burst into tears and left the table.
"Come," cried Mr. Hardy after a moment, during which no one seemed inclined to speak; "let us ask God to give us all wisdom at this time."