“I was not in bed all last night,” he said; “I was on the road like a tramp, Uncle Henry. My father turned me out of the house—”
Three lines came across Mr. Henry Joscelyn’s brow—three horizontal, well-marked lines. These were two too many. When he was sympathetic a slight indentation over his eyebrows was all that appeared. The second meant doubt, the third annoyance.
“Dear me!” he said, “how did that happen? I fear you must have been doing something to displease your father.”
“Who can help displeasing my father?” cried Harry. “I am sure, Uncle Henry, you know him well enough. I had been doing nothing wrong. I had been trying to get him to interest himself in my affairs. He has never done anything for me, it is you that have done everything for me. I laid before him a chance I’ve got. I meant at any rate to come and talk it all over with you; but in the first place I thought it was as well to ask a question about my mother’s money—”
“Ah—that was not quite an ingratiating way of opening the matter, I fear,” Uncle Henry said.
“Why not?” cried Harry, forgetting all the prudential rules he had been trying to impose upon himself. “My mother was willing, and when it would have advanced my interests—and of course I should have paid as good a per-centage as anybody else. Surety if there is anything a man can have a claim upon,” he added, argumentatively, “it must be his mother’s money. I mayn’t have any right to touch the family property, as I am only a younger son, and all that—and especially as there are such a lot of us; but my mother’s money—when it is doing nothing, only lying at interest. Surely a man has a claim upon that.”
“The man that has a claim upon that is your father, I should say. I never knew a man yet that liked any questions about his wife’s money,” said Mr. Joscelyn; “whether it’s in her own power or in his, its not a nice thing to interfere with. You have your own ways of looking at things, you young fellows; but in your place I would have said nothing about that. I didn’t know your mother had any money,” he added, in an indifferent tone.
“It is only—a thousand pounds, Uncle Henry: not what you would call a fortune—”
Mr. Henry Joscelyn smiled, and waved his hand. Impossible to have waved away a trifle, a nothing, with a more complete representation of its nothingness. “Ah—that!—” he said, “I thought I never had heard anything about money. Well, I can’t flatter you that your claim on your father was made in a very judicious way. And he would not hear of it? That is easy enough to understand; but why did he turn you out of doors?”
“I can’t tell you,” cried Harry, “I can tell you no more than that. I laid it all before him. It is a good opportunity, an opportunity that may never occur again. I have been in the office for three years, long enough to be a mere clerk.”