Leslie did not reply; but the tears which had been coming to her eyes now rolled down her cheeks. Mr. Parker noticed her emotion and was not ill pleased with it.
“You go to college if you wish it, young lady,” he said, “and I hold the purse-strings. When you want money you just write to me, and don’t bother that good mother of yours overmuch. So that affair is settled. Now, to turn to the others. This boy, for instance; he is Gilroy’s boy and worthy of his father. What do you mean to do, sir? Do you want a university life, too?”
“Oh, if you would only give it to him!” said Leslie. “Mother says you are rich, and if it is really as you say, and father laid his bond upon you, it does not seem too hard. Oh, if you would only do it!”
Her whole face lit up, her eyes shone, and she laid her hand on Mr. Parker’s arm.
“I’d do anything in the world for you, my dear; so if it is your wish, you have only to say the word. The boy looks intelligent, too. In Australia we would give a boy like that a bit of the bush to clear out, and a house to build, and we would teach him the rough essentials of life, and leave out the polishings; but Australia is Australia, and England is England; and as it seems to be all the development of the brain here——”
“And the body, too,” said Mrs. Gilroy. “You cannot say that we do not develop the bodies of our lads as long as we have football and cricket.”
“We have those, too, in Australia, and we manage to beat you once in a while,” said Parker, with a slight twinkle in his eyes. “But what does the lad want himself—that is the question?”
“Llewellyn wants to go either to Oxford or Cambridge,” said Leslie. “It has been the dream of his life.”
“Yes, it has been the dream of his life,” replied the mother.
She glanced at Llewellyn, whose face was now white as death.