“No, I don’t suppose you have; but, luckily for you both, I am not so badly off, and I mean to do something for you. What do you think would be the proper thing? Come, Dorothy, my little housewife, what do you reckon you can live on—living here, I mean, for I suppose that you do not mean to run away and leave me alone in my old age, do you?”
Dorothy wrinkled up her forehead as she used to as a child, and began to calculate upon her fingers. Presently she answered:
“Three hundred a year comfortably, quietly on two.”
“What!” said Mr. Cardus, “when the babies begin to come?”
Dorothy blushed, old gentlemen are so unpleasantly out-spoken, and Ernest jumped, for the prospect of unlimited babies is alarming till one gets used to it.
“Better make it five hundred,” he said.
“Oh,” said Mr. Cardus, “that’s what you think, is it? Well, I tell you what I think. I am going to allow you young people two thousand a year and pay the housekeeping bills.”
“My dear uncle, that is far more than we want.”
“Nonsense, Ernest! it is there and to spare; and why should you not have it, instead of its piling up in the bank or in investments? There are enough of them now, I can tell you. Everything that I have touched has turned to gold; I believe it has often been the case with unfortunate men. Money! I have more than I know what to do with, and there are idiots who think that to have lots of money is to be happy.”
He paused awhile and then went on: