“Indeed, indeed, Mark, you are very wrong and foolish to do this thing! Very, very foolish and wrong, indeed. Nevertheless, I am constrained to say that you are perfectly wise and right in persevering in your duty! Yes, sir!” said Mr. Bothsides, wiping his face furiously, and stuffing his white handkerchief back in his pocket. “And now, what do you mean to do further?” he asked.
“I shall go to the West.”
“Yes—yes—yes—yes,” said Uncle Billy, meditatively; “do so. Go to the West—go to some new place, and grow up with it. It will be the easiest thing on earth for you to rise in the world there, and success in the end is almost certain—though—confound it! you will find you’ll have to struggle very hard, and be very apt to be disappointed at last. You have no reason in the world to be the least bit discouraged—but—you must not be sanguine—that I can tell you! I make it a rule, without an exception never to give advice, Mark—notwithstanding—if you are ever at a loss how to act in an emergency, consult me, Mark—my best counsel is at your service. And I really think that with it you could not possibly go wrong,” said Mr. Bolling, drawing his handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his forehead, and replacing it with a look of great self-complacency.
“My dear Uncle Billy,” said Mark, with a quiet smile, “believe me, I know how to appreciate your fine, impartial judgment, and feel convinced that I never should come to harm in following your advice.”
With this proof of his high-minded nephew’s affection and confidence, Mr. Bolling’s blue eyes filled with tears, and he seized Mark’s hand, and squeezed it, and shook it, crying—
“Deuce fly away with you, Mark! I feel a perfect contempt for your folly and wrong-headedness in this matter—nevertheless—I am compelled to admit that I am filled with unmingled admiration for the wisdom and rectitude of your character and conduct! Yes, sir!”
This was said with great emphasis, and once more the cambric handkerchief was brought into violent requisition.
An hour after the end of this conversation, Mark Sutherland was seated in the library, impatiently waiting the entrance of his uncle, with whom he had at last succeeded in appointing an interview. He was anxious, restless, and unable to occupy himself with anything, during the few moments which seemed ages before the planter should enter. He tumbled over the books, rumpled the papers, shifted his position many times, started up and paced the floor, looked out of all the windows in turn, and finally went to the door to listen, and reached it just as it was swung open in his face, and old Clement Sutherland entered. The planter walked to the centre of the room, and threw himself into his leather-covered chair at his writing-table, saying, in a curt voice—
“Well, sir, what is your business with me?”
Startled by the unusual sternness of his manner, Mark Sutherland turned and looked at him inquiringly. The planter’s countenance wore an aspect of severity that at once told his nephew that from some cause or by some means he had been led to suspect the nature of the communication the latter was about to make him.