“The affair is decided, I suppose,” said Mrs. Berkeley to her husband, as he folded up the letter he had been reading aloud. “It is well that Horace’s opinion is so boldly given, as we agreed to abide by it.”
“Horace knows as much about my private affairs as I do myself, and a great deal more about the prospects of the banking business,” replied Mr. Berkeley. “We cannot do better than take his advice. Depend upon it, the connexion will turn out a fine thing for my family, as Horace says. It is chiefly for your sakes, my dear girls.”
“May I look again at Horace’s letter?” asked Fanny, as her father paused to muse. “I did not understand that he thought it could be more than a safe, and probably advantageous, connexion. Ah! here it is—‘I like the prospect, as affording you the moderate occupation you seem to want, and perhaps enabling you to leave something more to my sisters than your former business yielded for them. Times were never more prosperous for banking; and you can scarcely lose anything, however little you may gain, by a share in so small and safe a concern as the D—— bank.’”
Fanny looked at her father as she finished reading this, as much as to inquire where was the promise of fine things to arise out of the new partnership.
“Horace is very cautious, you know,” observed Mr. Berkeley: “he always says less than he means—at least when he has to give advice to any of the present company; all of whom he considers so sanguine, that, I dare say, he often congratulates us on having such a son and brother as himself to take care of us.”
“He yields his office to Melea only,” observed Mrs. Berkeley, looking towards her younger daughter, who was reading the letter once more before giving her opinion. “Tell us, Melea, shall your father be a banker or still an idle gentleman?”
“Has he ever been an idle gentleman?” asked Melea. “Can he really want something to do when he has to hurry from one committee-room to another every morning, and to visit the workhouse here and the gaol at D——, and to serve on juries, and do a hundred things besides, that prevent his riding with Fanny and me oftener than once a month?”
“These are all very well, my dear,” said her father; “but they are not enough for a man who was brought up to business, and who has been accustomed to it all his life. I would not, at sixty five, connect myself with any concern which involved risk, or much labour; but I should like to double your little fortunes, when it may be done so easily, and the attempt can do no harm.”
“I wish,” said Fanny, “you would not make this a reason. Melea and I shall have enough; and if we had not, we should be sorry to possess more at the expense of your entering into business again, after yourself pronouncing that the time had come for retiring from it.”
“Well, but, my dears, this will not be like my former business, now up and now down; so that one year I expected nothing less than to divide my plum between you, and the next to go to gaol. There will be none of these fluctuations in my new business.”