He was reproaching himself. "That poor girl has been eating her heart out for a word of love from me. I'm a brute!"
CHAPTER XXXVI.
The God in the Machine
Uncle Peter next morning was up to a late breakfast with the stricken family. Percival found him a trifle less bitter, but not less convinced in his despair. The young man himself had recovered his spirits wonderfully. The utter collapse of the old man, always so reliant before, had served to fire all his latent energy. He was now voluble with plans for the future; not only determined to reassure Uncle Peter that the family would be provided for, but not a little anxious to justify the old man's earlier praise, and refute his calumnies of the night before.
Mrs. Bines, so complacent overnight, was the most disconsolate one of the group. With her low tastes she was now regarding the loss of the fortune as a calamity to the worthy infants of her own chosen field.
"And there, I'd promised to give five thousand dollars to the new home for crippled children, and five thousand to St. John's Guild for the floating hospitals this summer—just yesterday—and I do declare, I just couldn't stay in New York without money, and see those poor babies suffer."
"You couldn't stay in New York without money. Mrs. Good-thing," said her son,—"not even if you couldn't see a thing; but don't you welsh on any of your plays—we'll make that ten thousand good if I have to get a sand-bag, and lay out a few of these lads around here some dark night."
"But anyway you can't do much to relieve them. I don't know but what it's honester to be poor while the authorities allow such goings on."
"You have the makings of a very dangerous anarchist in you, ma. I've seen that for some time. But we're an honest family all right now, with the exception of a few properties that I'll have to sit up with nights—sit right by their sick-beds and wake them up to take their meddy every half hour—"