“I am not so sure of that, but I trust all will come right, my dear Mrs. Grandison. It is a great responsibility that we parents undertake. There is nothing in life but care and trouble, it seems to me, in one form or another. And now, as I hear the carriages coming up, I will say good night.”
Mr. Stamford went home to his hotel, much musing on the events of the evening, nor was he able to sleep, indeed, during the early portion of the night, in consequence of the uneasiness which the unsatisfactory condition of his friend’s family caused him.
“Poor Grandison!” he said to himself. “More than once have I envied him his easy circumstances. I suppose it is impossible for a man laden with debt and crushed with poverty to avoid that sort of thing. But I shall never do so again. With all my troubles, if I thought Hubert and Laura were likely to become like those two young people as a natural consequence, I would not change places with him to-morrow. The boy, so early blasé, with evil knowledge of the world, tainted with the incurable vice of gambling, too fond of wine already, what has he to look forward to? What will he be in middle age? And the girl, selfish and frivolous, a woman of the world, when hardly out of her teens, scorning her mother’s wishes, owning no law but her own pleasure, looking forward but to a marriage of wealth or rank, if her own undisciplined feelings stand not in the way! Money is good, at any rate, as far as it softens the hard places of life; but if I thought that wealth would bring such a blight upon my household, would so wither the tender blossoms of hope and faith, would undermine manly endeavour and girlish graces, I would spurn it from me to-morrow. I would—--”
With which noble and sincere resolve Mr. Stamford fell asleep.
Upon awaking next morning, he was almost disposed to think that the strength of his disapproval as to the younger members of the Grandison family might only have been enthusiasm, artificially heightened by his host’s extremely good wine. “That were indeed a breach of hospitality,” he said to himself. “And after all, it is not, strictly speaking, my affair. I am grown rusty and precise, it may be, from living so monotonous a life in the bush, so far removed from the higher fashionable existence. Doubtless these things, which appear to me so dangerous and alarming, are only the everyday phenomena of a more artificial society. Let us hope for the best—that Carlo Grandison may tone down after a few years, and that Miss Josie’s frivolity may subside into mere fashionable matronhood.”
Mr. Stamford finished his breakfast with an appetite which proved either his moderation in the use of the good familiar creature over-night, or a singularly happy state of the biliary secretions. He then proceeded in a leisurely way to open his letters. Glancing at the postmark “Mooramah,” the little country town near home, and recognising Hubert’s bold, firm handwriting, he opened it, and read as follows:—
“My dear old Dad,—I have no doubt you are enjoying yourself quietly, but thoroughly, now that you have cleared off the Bank of New Guinea and got in with the Austral Agency Company. Mother says you are to give yourself all reasonable treats, and renew your youth if possible, but not to think you have the Bank of England to draw upon just yet.
“I told her you were to be trusted, and I have a piece of good news for you, which will bear a little extravagance on its back. I am very glad we were able to pay off that bank.
“They had no right to push you as they did. However, I suppose they can’t always help it. Now for the news, if some beastly telegram has not anticipated it. We have had RAIN!
“Yes, rain in large letters! What do you think of that? Forty-eight hours of steady rain! Five inches sixty points! Didn’t it come down!—cats and dogs, floods and waterspouts!