“It’s after eleven. My mother and father have gone to bed.”
“Is he—is he in any way reconciled?” I asked, and I think I tried to convey something of resentment by my tone. I still believed that she must guess.
“In a way,” she said, and sighed rather wearily.
“It must have been very hard for him to make up his mind so quickly—to such a change,” I agreed politely.
“It was easier than I expected,” she said. “He was so practical. Just at first, of course, while Mr. Jervaise was there, he seemed broken. I didn’t know what we should do. I was almost afraid that he would refuse to come. But afterwards he—well, he squared his shoulders. He is magnificent. He’s as solid as a rock. He didn’t once reproach us. He seemed to have made up his mind; only one thing frightened him…”
“What was that?” I asked, as she paused.
“That we haven’t any capital to speak of,” she said. “Even after we have sold the furniture here, we shan’t have more than five or six hundred pounds so far as we can make out. And he says it isn’t enough. He says that he and mother are too old to start again from small beginnings. And—oh! a heap of practical things. He is so slow in some ways that it startled us all to find out how shrewd he was about this. It was his own subject, you see.”
“There needn’t be any difficulty about capital,” I said eagerly. I had hardly had patience for her to finish her speech. From her first mention of that word “capital” I had seen my chance to claim a right in the Banks’s fortunes.
“I don’t see…” she began, and then checked herself and continued stiffly, “My father would never accept help of any kind.”
“Arthur might—from a friend,” I said.