“Put it in the bank,” suggested Aunt Martha.
“Yes, and live on the interest,” added Aunt Jane.
“Or invest in the whale-fishery,” said Captain Dunning, emitting a voluminous cloud of tobacco-smoke, as if to suggest the idea that the investment would probably end in something similar to that. (The captain was a peculiarly favoured individual; he was privileged to smoke in the Misses Dunning’s parlour.)
“Oh! I’ll tell you what to do, Glynn,” cried Ailie, clapping her hands; “it would be so nice. Buy a cottage with it—a nice, pretty, white-painted cottage, beside a wood, with a little river in front of it, and a small lake with a boat on it not far off, and a far, far view from the windows of fields, and villages, and churches, and cattle, and sheep, and—”
“Hurrah! Ailie, go it, my lass!” interrupted Glynn; “and horses, and ponies, and carts, and cats, and blackbirds, and cocks and hens, and ploughmen, and milkmaids, and beggars, all in the foreground; and coaches, and railroads, and steamboats, and palaces, and canals, in the middle distance; with a glorious background of the mighty sea glittering for ever under the blazing beams of a perpetually setting sun, mingled with the pale rays of an eternally rising moon, and laden with small craft, and whale-ships, and seaweed, and fish, and bumboats, and men-of-war!”
“Oh, how nice!” cried Ailie, screaming with delight.
“Go ahead, lad, never give in!” said the captain; whose pipe during this glowing description had been keeping up what seemed like a miniature sea-fight. “You’ve forgot the main point.”
“What’s that?” inquired Glynn.
“Why, a palace for Jacko close beside it, with a portrait of Jacko over the drawing-room fireplace, and a marble bust of Jacko in the four corners of every room.”
“So I did; I forgot that,” replied Glynn.