“No, my son! I bought a few more in addition. In fact, there’s a box of books coming up by the train.”
“A box of books! Hurrah! What times we shall have, when the evenings get longer. But, I say, dad! isn’t that rather extravagant? You’ll have the mater on to you if you begin to buy books by the box.”
“They will have to last us some time, Hubert; you will find a good deal of stiff reading among them. But if things go well generally, I won’t stint you in books. We must charge them to the rain account this time.”
“I suppose we can save out of something else, but I really have found it hard, the last year or two, to do without a new book now and then. It’s so tantalising to see the names and read the reviews when you’re not able to get them. But of course it couldn’t be helped when things looked so bad.”
“I have a notion, Hubert, that things will never look so bad again. However, we must not be led away by temporary good fortune. Perseverance is, after all, the great secret of success. Without that mere cleverness is misleading, and even mischievous.”
It was so far fortunate for Mr. Stamford, and it certainly made his allotted task the easier, that he had always been somewhat reticent as to business details.
They were subjects concerning which he disliked conversation extremely, so that although he confided in his wife and family as to every change in their pecuniary position, he was wont to ignore special explanation, much more the repetition of detail.
When he announced therefore in general terms, from time to time, to his family that things were going well, and that Mr. Barrington Hope’s financial plan, coupled with that extraordinary advance in the value of pastoral property occasioned by the rain, enabled him to raise the standard of their house-keeping, they were satisfied, and did not press for further information.
Now commenced for Harold Stamford the ideal country life towards which he had always aspired, but from which, latterly, he had been further removed than ever. He enjoyed the advantages of the dweller away from cities without the drawbacks which so often tend to render that idyllic life monotonous and depressing.
He had daily outdoor exercise in sufficient quantity to produce the wholesome half-tired feeling so necessary to repose.