"I see they are."
As a matter of fact the uproar had attracted her husband to his study window.
"They are an interesting family."
He stood at the window for a second or two observing the fray.
"I fancy that in John B. David John G. William has met his match. It is perhaps as well that he should."
He was aware, from previous experience, that if he interfered in one of the family discussions it would only be renewed at the earliest opportunity. As he was wondering whether it would not be as well to let them fight it out and have done with it, at any rate for the time, a servant entered the room with a letter in her hand. The principal opened it. It was a cablegram:
"Forgot to advise last shipment. Three. Draw Rödenheim.--Bindon."
"'What sort of a family can that be," inquired the schoolmaster of himself, "which is so large that the father overlooks such a trifling detail as the sending of three of his sons, all of tender years, unescorted, across the Atlantic Ocean? And when, a month after their departure, the incident does occur to his mind, he contents himself with sending nine words--and nine such words--in a telegram. I think I will go up in person to Messrs. Rödenheim, and make a few inquiries."
He made them, but he received little information in return. Messrs. Rödenheim received him with courtesy. They informed him that, up to a certain amount, they were instructed to honour his calls; that Mr. Bindon was a client of theirs, financially, of the highest standing. But as to his family affairs: they were simply bankers, and as such Mr. Harland could not suppose that they concerned themselves with the family affairs of their customers.
"One thing seems pretty clear," said Mr. Harland to his wife, when he returned to Mulberry House. "There appears, in the case of the prolific parent of the Bindons, to be plenty of money, and that is more than can be said in the case of the parents of all my boys. I don't see myself, Maria, why I should object to there being seven, or even seventy brothers in a family, especially if the father of the seventy is a good paymaster, and all the seventy come to me."