“The fish was only sent in at half past six this evening,” said his wife, in a low, monotonous voice. “It was so late I thought it would not be here in time for dinner.”
“And a good thing if it hadn’t been,” retorted the Colonel; “I’d sooner have no fish at all than fish like that—uneatable, perfectly uneatable.”
Mrs. Raymond was silent, and the meal proceeded to the noise only of knives and forks.
“Arthur Avesham, too,” broke out the Colonel again. “He’ll have to make his way in the world alone now. What’s to happen to him and Jeannie? Tell me that. Some ignoramus said the other day that his father had bought him a place in Dalton’s brewery here. I don’t believe a word of it, not a word of it. Even if it’s true, what then? Eh?”
“Perhaps he’ll go on living at Morton, if it’s true,” said Mrs. Raymond, “or perhaps he’ll take a house at Wroxton.”
“Take a house in Wroxton?” cried her husband, again insulted. “Sheer nonsense. There’s not a house in the town to live in beside our own. And as for Morton, I tell you that they’ll have to shut it up. They’re as poor as rats.”
“If it’s true about his place in Dalton’s,” said Mrs. Raymond, “I suppose he will have a few hundred a year. His father cannot have left him nothing.”
“A few hundred a year!” said Colonel Raymond. “If I were to say that his income was a hundred and fifty all told, I should be overstating it. And what’s that to a young fellow who has been brought up with every luxury that wealth and rank can supply? Eh?”
“I thought you said they were as poor as rats,” remarked Mrs. Raymond, in the same even, colourless voice.
The argument—or, rather, the string of assertions—was not worth continuing, and Colonel Raymond only snorted contemptuously in reply. The three daughters had long been fidgeting on their seats and struggling against the twitchings of sleepiness. They were not yet of an age to dine with their parents, but Colonel Raymond insisted on their presence at dinner till bedtime came. Sometimes they were regaled with a grape or two, but usually they had to sit silent and unoccupied. Their father said he saw so little of them during the day, which was not surprising, since the first rule of the house was that he must never be disturbed. Occasionally he took them out for a walk, and then he might be seen stalking over the downs outside the town, stopping occasionally to revile them for lagging behind, followed by a string of small figures in various stages of labour and distress, panting and trotting after him. These nightmare excursions were part of Colonel Raymond’s system. A good, quick walk he considered the panacea of all childish ailments, particularly tiredness, which was synonymous with laziness, and he did not approve of coddling. Consequently their mother coddled them in private, and their father walked them off their legs in public. The happy mean did not result from this treatment, and they were growing up peaked and thin, and their father had to confess that even the best blood in England had a tendency to run to seed.