"So you mean to encourage the lad in stuck-up ways, do you?" he asked. "You want Mark to be a fine, do-nothing gentleman when he leaves school? I wish I had never sent him, but I've promised him three years, and I never broke my word yet. He shall have his time, and then—"
There was comfort in the thought. Daniel Walthew never boasted of his money. It was happiness enough to know of his hoards, and how they grew—grew, day by day, as the grass grew, without being watched. No need that others should share the knowledge with him. But Daniel liked every one to regard him as a man of his word, and he would keep a promise at any cost to himself. So Barbara knew that Mark was safe up to seventeen, and by that time something might happen.
However much Mr. Walthew might wish to keep the actual amount of his property a secret, and perhaps most of all to his son, lest Mark should thereon found a claim to live as a gentleman, other people talked and calculated, unassisted by any hint from him. The talk reached Mark's ears, and he tried to speak about it to his mother.
"Everybody says my father is a very rich man. If he is, why should we not have a different house from this, and live like other people? It seems a shame that you should do the cleaning and washing, and that father should work just like a labouring man, when we might have things as pretty as the Mitchesons have. It is so pleasant even to look round one of their rooms, and to sit at a table where the silver and glass glitter when the light falls on them, and the table-cloth shines like satin. If we only had a few pretty vases to put flowers here and there, they would brighten the table, and we have plenty in the garden."
Mrs. Walthew looked terrified when Mark spoke of his father's wealth.
"Hush, dear!" she said. "People talk of things they know nothing about. How should they? Your father keeps his affairs to himself. As to him and me dressing up like gentlefolks, and having servants to wait on us in a big house, we should be fish out of water. We are used to our work, we couldn't be idle, and if we had to change our ways, we should be miserable. Let us alone, lad. We are best as we are. As to sticking flowers about the place, why, you have only to turn your head, and there they are all in sight, and the sweet smell coming in at the open door, so that you cannot help knowing they are there."
Mark had to be silent, for he could get no information from his mother with regard to his father's wealth; only a hurried, frightened whisper, for Mr. Walthew's step was heard on the gravel.
"Don't trouble yourself! There is only you for everything, but you will have to humour father, for he can do as he likes with what belongs to him."
"But, mother, he talks of my coming and living here in his way and working as he works. I never shall. Do you think if a blind man's eyes were suddenly opened, and he had the power either to keep his sight or go back to his old state, he would shut them and choose blindness? I have seen a better, brighter life, mother. I can never settle down at Grimblethorpe again."
Mr. Walthew's entrance prevented more conversation, and Mark, seeing that an allusion to money matters or his own future only troubled his mother, said no more, but worked harder than ever, and bided his time. He had, however, a confederate and devoted friend in Dolly Mitcheson. Dolly was the very soul of honour, and to be trusted. Her brothers, big and little, chose her as the repository of their secrets, and the one girl of the family was never known to "peach." It mattered not to her whether the smallest toddles in the nursery, or Fred, who was growing tall and manly, chose to speak confidentially, or whether the subject was trivial or important, she was equally trustworthy in every case.