Marion listened, standing with the decanter in her hand. “Will you really take nothing, papa; not a little sherry to keep you going till dinner-time?” she said.
“My Aunt,” said Archie, “is a very good woman; she has been everything that is kind to us, and my own mother’s sister—more than the grandest lady in the land. If she is not a lady, neither was my mother, I suppose?”
“Your mother was—like nobody else, nor to be compared with anybody else,” said Rowland hastily. “But you are quite right to stand up for your aunt. I don’t doubt she has been very kind to you.”
“Oh,” said Marion, turning her head, “no more than was just her duty, papa. We’ve done a great deal for her. There is just as much to be said on the one side as the other. You can take a piece of shortbread, Archie, and a wee drop of the sherry wine will do you good.”
The lad pushed her hand away somewhat rudely. “I wish,” he said, “you wouldn’t interrupt what papaw says.”
The girl broke off a little piece of the cake for herself. She poured out a little of the port and sipped it. “Aunty will be vexed if she thinks it hasn’t been touched,” she said, munching and sipping. Rowland turned his look from her to that pair of blue eyes which were like his Mary’s. They were the only comfort he had in the strange circumstances. He addressed himself to them as to something in which there was understanding in this uncongenial place.
“I am afraid, my boy,” he said gently, “that we’ve all been wrong. I first for forgetting that you were growing into a man. It was only my wife’s enquiries, anxious as she was to hear everything about you, that showed me my dreadful mistake in this respect. And your aunt has been wrong, which was very excusable on her part, in forgetting that your bringing up, for the position you are likely to have, should have been different. Where have you been at school?”
“I’ve been at a very good school,” said Archie; “it’s no fault of the school. I’ve maybe been a little idle. Aunty always said—that is, I thought, as there was plenty of money, what was the use of being a galley slave. So I just got through.”
“And what is the use,” said Marion, “of toiling like the lads that have to go up for exams, when you are such a rich man, papa, and he will never need to work for his living. It’s always a nice thing to get grand prizes; but he was not going in for anything, and what for should he have risked his health, that was of far more consequence?”
“Let’s alone, May. I was maybe wrong, but that was my own opinion, papaw.”