“But if his party is made up, Tod? Whitney said it was.”
“Rubbish, Johnny. Made up! They could as well make room for another. And much good some of them are, I dare say! I can’t remember that Slingsby ever took an oar in his hand at Oxford. All he went in for was star-gazing—and chapels—and lectures. And look at Bill Whitney! He hates rowing.”
“Did you tell Temple you would like to join them?”
“He could see it. I didn’t say in so many words, Will you have me? Of all things, I should enjoy a boating tour! It would be the most jolly thing on earth.”
That night, after we got in, the subject of the money grievance cropped up again. The Squire was smoking his long churchwarden pipe at the open window; Mrs. Todhetley sat by the centre table and the lamp, hemming a strip of muslin. Tod, open as the day on all subjects, abused Temple’s “churlishness” for not inviting him to make one of the boating party, and declared he would organize one of his own, which he could readily do, now he was not tied for money. That remark set the Squire on.
“Ay, that’s just where it would be, Joe,” said he. “Let you keep the money in your own fingers, and we should soon see what it would end in.”
“What would it end in?” demanded Tod.
“Ducks and drakes.”
Tod tossed his head. “You think I am a child still, I believe, father.”
“You are no better, where the spending of money’s concerned,” said the Squire, taking a long whiff. “Few young men are. Their fathers know that, and keep it from them as long as they can. And that’s why so many are not let come into possession of their estates before they are five-and-twenty. This young Temple, it seems, does not come into his; Johnny, here, does not.”