"Whether he is to succeed you or not?"
"Why, of course he must succeed: failing yourself. What are you thinking of, Harry, to ask it? I've no son of my own: it's not likely I shall have one now. He will be Sir Adam after me."
"It's not the title I was thinking of, Joseph. Failing a direct heir, I know that must come to him. But the property?--will he have that? It is not entailed; and you could cut him out absolutely."
"D'ye think I'd be so unjust as that, Harry?" was the half indignant reply. "A baronet's title, and nothing to keep it up upon! I have never had an idea of leaving it away from you; or from him if you went first. When Adam succeeds to my name and rank, he will succeed to my property. Were my wife to survive me, she'd have this place for life, and a good part of the income: but Adam would get it all at her death."
"This takes a weight off my mind," avowed Captain Andinnian. "Adam was not brought up to any profession. Beyond the two hundred a year he'll inherit from me----"
"A bad thing that--no profession," interrupted Sir Joseph. "If I had ten sons, and they were all heirs to ten baronetcies, each one should be brought up to use his brains or his hands."
"It's what I have urged over and over again," avowed the captain. "But the wife--you know what she is--set her face against it. 'He'll be Sir Adam Andinnian of Foxwood,' she'd answer me with, 'and he shall not soil his hands with work.' I have been nearly, always afloat, too, Joseph: not on the spot to enforce things: something has lain in that."
"I wonder the young man should not have put himself forward to be of use in the world!"
"Adam is idly inclined. I am sorry for it, but it is so. One thing has been against him, and that's his health. He's as tall and strong a young fellow to look at as you'd meet in a summer's day, but he is, I fear, anything but sound in constitution. A nice fellow too, Joseph."
"Of good disposition?"