I answer "Yes." The portrait is drawn from life, and is given in its natural repulsiveness, that it may prove a warning against flirtation.
[BY A GIRL'S HAND]
[CHAPTER I.]
LIKE FATHER UNLIKE SON.
"AND so you want to be a-setting up for a gentleman, do you? You think you know better than anybody else, and that what has been good enough for me—and my father and grandfather too, for that matter—is not good enough for you. You are going to be dressed up in broadcloth on week days, and work with your coat on, are you? Grimblethorpe isn't big enough for a fine fellow like you to swagger about in. You must have a market-town, must you? And I suppose you'll be going up and down the streets o' nights, like plenty more of the same sort that are 'shamed of the honest work that their fathers took their coats off to do, and gloried in doing well. You'll be smoking cigars next, and wearing a top hat, and going in for all the new-fangled ways of spending money that young fellows practise nowadays, because they have never known what went to the earning of it. But you'll rue not having taken my advice, as sure as your name is Mark Walthew."
The speaker, Daniel Walthew, and father of Mark, paused for a minute, not because he had finished, or that he desired any reply from his son; he was only out of breath, and was fain to recover it.
More than once Mark had tried to answer these hard words, which pained him sorely; but all to no purpose. From his earliest childhood he had been told to speak when he was spoken to. But, though he was now long past childhood, he was rarely allowed to speak at all if his father were holding forth, and especially if he were not in a very happy frame of mind at the time.
Daniel Walthew had always prided himself on what he called "keeping to his own rut." By this he meant holding to the same opinions, keeping to the same habits, living on the same spot, doing the same kind of work as he had done ever since he could remember, and thus following in the steps of the father and grandfather who had gone before him. Each of these had saved a good bit of money, and handed it down to be added to by the next generation. Daniel Walthew had been the only son of his father, and though there had been three children born to himself, Mark was the only survivor.
Everybody in Grimblethorpe knew that Daniel Walthew must be well-off, but nobody, his wife and son included, could have told how well. Daniel considered that to let a woman or a young man know the length of his purse would be a great mistake, and only teach idleness, pride, and extravagance. It was commonly reported that even on his wedding-day he had half killed his bride by making her walk some twelve miles, on a hot summer's afternoon, from her native village, where they were married, to the cottage at Grimblethorpe which was to be her new home.
"We'll send the boxes by carrier," said Daniel; "you and I can walk. I mean to begin as we shall go on, Barbara."