"You mustn't say that. You're the head of the family, not your son."
"He had scarce a word to answer when I told him how I'd been to Lawyer Dawes and turned it over. As for Dawes himself, he feels a thought doubtful whether I should part with my own so freely; but 'no,' I said, 'I understand what I'm doing.' A bit of bread and a cup of water is all I shall ever ask from my children. Let them do what I've failed to do and carry on the name in a proper way. I want to be forgot, Adam; and yet, because they're quite agreeable to take all and let me be forgot, I smart. Such is man."
"Nature and order can't be swept away," answered Winter. "Your children are very orderly children, and no doubt they'll do as you wish; but you mustn't think to go out of their lives and deny them your wisdom and advice. You've got your bargain to keep still, while you're in the land of the living. You mustn't wash your hands of 'em. You must show 'em that you're part of 'em yet, and that their good is yours and your good is theirs."
"They care not for my good—why should they? They don't want my wisdom, for well they know my wisdom is foolishness. Who'd seek me now? Who'd listen to me now, but a few such as you and William, who have the patience of those who grow old and can still forgive all and laugh kindly? No: they are children, and wisdom they need and experience they lack—the more so because the world has run smooth for them. But they don't look to me and they never did. All but Auna were set against me from their short coats. They began to doubt as soon as they could walk. Their grandmother was their god, and they'll live to find she was a false god. They didn't get their hard hearts from Margery, or me."
"Trust to that then," urged the other. "Be patient and wait and watch, and you'll see yourself in them yet, and your wife also."
"You have a great trust in your fellow-creatures, Adam Winter."
"You must trust 'em if you're going to get any peace. What's life worth if you can't trust? 'Tis to people the world with enemies and make yourself a hunted creature."
"'Hunted' is a very good word," answered Jacob, "that's the state of most of us. As to my children," he continued, "Peter will carry on here with Middleweek, and he's very well able to do it—better already at a bargain than ever I was, and likely to be more popular with customers than I. But my sons have got to make me payments. That's fair—eh?"
"Certainly it is."
"And Auna must be thought upon also. She's first in my mind, and always will be, and she needn't fear, when I go, that she'll be forgot. I've managed pretty cleverly for her, well knowing that she'd not think of such things when she grows up."