"But what did Uncle Claude die of?" asked Robert again. "I don't remember to have heard."
"Never mind what. It was an unhappy death, and we have not cared to speak of it. Moat Grange is worth about two thousand a-year: and we have been doing wrong, in one respect, ever since we came to it, for we have put nothing by."
"Why should you have put by, father?"
"There! That is an exemplification of your random way of speaking and thinking. Moat Grange is entailed upon you, every shilling of it."
"Well, it will be enough for me, with what I have," said Robert.
"I hope it will. But it would have been anything but well had I died; for in that case your mother and sisters would have been beggars."
"Oh, father!"
"Yes; all would have lapsed to you. Let me go on. Claude Dalrymple left many debts behind him, some of them cruel ones—personal ones—we will not enter into that. I—moved by a chivalrous feeling perhaps, but which I and your mother have never repented of—took those personal debts upon me, and paid them off by degrees."
"I should have done the same," cried impulsive Robert.
"And the estate had of course to be kept up, for I would not have had it said that Moat Grange suffered by its change of owners, and your mother thought with me; so that altogether we had a struggle for it, and were positively less at our ease for ready-money here than we had been in our little household in London. When the debts were cleared off, and we had breathing time, I began to think of saving: but I am sorry to say it was only thought of; not done. The cost of educating you children increased as you grew older; Alice's illness came on and was a great and continued expense; and, what with one thing and another, we never did, or have, put by. Your expenses at college were enormous."