“Then I should give foolishly, papa.”
“Very likely, my dear, very likely; every one has to pay for his own experience. It is a very dear commodity, Lucy; I can’t give you mine, you must get it for yourself, and it has always, always to be paid for. There is no question about that.”
“But, papa, would it not be a great deal better—you who have this experience, who have paid for it and got it—instead of living quietly here as if you were nobody, to do it all yourself?”
The old man laughed.
“There you have hit it, Lucy,” he said, “there you have hit it, my dear. I live quietly, as if I were nobody—and I am nobody—that is exactly the state of affairs.”
“But,” she cried, with great surprise and indignation, “if you mean nobody in family, then neither am I, but the money, the money is all yours to do with it whatever you please.”
Once more he laughed, and chuckled, and lost his breath, and coughed before he could recover it again; and whether it was the laughing, or the coughing, or something else, Lucy could not tell, but the water stood in his eyes.
“You are mistaken, Lucy, you are mistaken,” he said. “You must understand the truth, my dear; neither am I any one to speak of, nor is the money mine. I have made a little in my life—oh, very little—a poor school-master’s earnings—what are they, nothing to make a fuss about. I’ve put my little savings away for Jock, you know that. A few thousand pounds, just as much as will give him a start in the world, if it is well taken care of.”
“Papa, you ought to give Jock the half,” said Lucy reproachfully; “it is not fair that he should have nothing, and that all should come to me.”
“Listen to her!” said the old man; “first telling me to spend it myself, and then to give half to the boy. Nothing of the sort, Lucy; I know what justice is, and I mean to do it. Do you think I could take poor Lucilla’s money to make that brat a gentleman? Why, it’s a kind of insult to her, poor thing, that he’s there at all. I don’t say a word against his mother, Lucy, but I always felt I never ought to have married her. I was not like a young man, I was middle-aged even before I married poor Lucilla, and I had no business to have the other; it was a mistake, it was an affront to your poor mother. People say that you show how happy you’ve been with the first when you get a second, but I don’t go in with that. When I think of facing these two women and not knowing which I belong to, I— I don’t like it, Lucy. Lucilla was always very considerate, and made great allowances, but there are things a woman can’t be expected to put up with, and I don’t like the thought.”