“Well, my dear, frankly it's not nice; and as I said, if Fred were going to have Wyvern Hall, I shouldn't like it at all. Still, Alice, I think you are inclined to be a little too hard upon Fred. He is a shrewd man of the world, no doubt, but you see you don't know anything about men of the world, and so these things go a little against your grain. I like Fred Bingham very much; he's a pleasant, amiable, chatty young fellow, although he has not been brought up, so to speak, in the traditions of a gentleman. I like him, but I don't do more. I shall, of course, leave him some money when I die, but I confess I should never really care for him as I do for Frank, with all his headstrong ways and the annoyance he has given me.”
Alice felt pleased.
“Thank you, uncle. There is, in my opinion, no more comparison between my two cousins than between light and dark.”
“Yes, Alice, I know your opinions on the subject, but as I said, you are not an impartial judge. Women never are when it is between a man of birth who has a fortune and no work to do, and one who has to fight his way.”
“But, my dear uncle, my cousins are equally well born, and equally well educated; I do not see why there should be any difference between them.”
“Yes, my dear, there is a very great difference,” Captain Bradshaw said positively. “Frank was brought up with the idea that he should never have to work for his living. Therefore he has no notion whatever of business, is romantic in his ideas, would not do a mean thing to save his life, and refused, even at the risk of losing my favour, to do as I wanted him—in fact, is a gentleman. Fred has been brought up in a different school. He was educated at some private school or other; his father is, I have always heard—for I never saw the man, and never want to—is a sharp man of business, and married my silly sister for her money, and Fred has had it instilled into him that money-making is the great end of life. He is a good-tempered, off-hand young fellow, and this has not done him so much harm as it would do most lads. He has been to college, certainly, but that has not done him as much good as it should have done. He has turned out a man of the world, and as such, though I like him very well, I could never love him as I do Frank. You see the difference of their marriages. Frank marries a little Irish girl without a halfpenny. She, I have no doubt, to use his own expression, a most loveable little woman; and he is as proud of his marriage as if he had made the best match conceivable. Fred, on the other hand, without a tithe of Frank's natural advantages, marries a girl with a fortune, and without a father to look after her. I shall be interested, Alice, in watching the different way in which the young couples will go on.”
“I know which will be the happiest, uncle.”
“You think you know, Alice, because you have not got rid of your romance yet. From what I know of my two nephews, I should say they would both make very good husbands in a different sort of way.”
Alice dissented very strongly from her uncle, but as she could not have said so without adducing reasons which would have shaken what belief her uncle had in Fred Bingham, which she was determined not to do, she was silent.