“Oh, Horace!” his mother exclaimed.
“Are you really deciding to go out again,” said Elise, “when mother does so want you to give it up? Are you so devoted to your profession, Horace? It isn’t as if there were active service in prospect. I do think you have had enough of it.”
“But remember, my dear Elise,” answered Horace, “that I am not a second Con, and I am quite content to be myself. But I could not stand nothing to do, and no distinct position. I should hate hanging about.”
“But you know, my dear boy,” said his mother, “there are plenty of things you could get to do.”
“Not without some capital,” said Horace pointedly.
“Perhaps not,” she replied, flushing a little. “All the same you need not talk as if you were alone in the world. There is nothing I long for more than to see you settled down with—plenty to do, and—” but she did not finish her sentence—“that would come no doubt in good time.”
“I don’t know that it would,” said Horace, not affecting ignorance of her meaning, “not if I give up my only certainty, or, practically speaking, my only certainty of better things in the future, at any rate.”
For though Horace was not entirely unprovided for on the paternal side as a younger son, the family property was strictly entailed on the elder brother, leaving the others to a great extent dependent on their mother.
Mrs Littlewood made a movement as if to withdraw her hand.
“You pain me, Horace,” she said, “when you say such things.”