"I know. There's a complaint some folks have, they're always eatin' and you can never see as their food has profited them. It's so with Bideabout—he is ever picking up money, but it don't seem to do him a scrap of good. What has he done with his money that he has saved?"
"I do not know."
"And I don't suppose he does himself. No, if you wish me to leave the hundred pounds to the child instead of to yourself then I will do so, heartily, and look about for some one in whom I can place confidence to undertake to be trustee. Simon is too old and he is getting foolish. My word, if, after I'm dead and gone, Simon should take it into his stupid head to marry Polly—I'd rise out of my grave to forbid the banns."
"You need have no fear of that, mother."
"If you had been in the house you could have kept an eye on him. There, again, my wrong deed finds me out. Matabel, it's my solemn conviction that there's no foolishness men won't be up to, especially widowers. They've been kept in order so long that they break out when their wives are dead. Have you ever seen a horse as has been clipped and kept all winter on hay in the stables when he chances to get out into a meadow, up go his heels, he turns frisky, gallops about, and there's no catching him again—not even with oats. He prefers the fresh grass and his freedom. That's just like widowers; or they're ginger beer bottles, very much up, wi' their corks out. What a pity it is Providence has given men so little common sense! Well, I'll see to that matter of the trusteeship, and the little man shall have a hundred pounds as a stand-by in the chance his father may have fooled away his own money."
CHAPTER XXXI.
SURPRISES.
Jonas Kink not only raised no objection to having an entertainment at the baptism of his child, but he expressed his hearty desire that nothing should be spared to repay the gossips for what they had done to assist the infant into the Christian Church, by feeding them well, and giving them what they valued more highly, something to drink.
Mehetabel was gratified, and hoped that this was a token that, rude as his manner was, he would gradually unbend and become amiable. On the day of the christening, Bideabout was in a bustle, he passed from one room to another to see that all was in order; he rubbed his palms and laughed to himself. Occasionally his eyes rested on Sally Rocliffe, and then there was a malicious twinkle in them. There was little affection lost between the two. Neither took pains to conciliate the other. Each commented freely on those characteristics of the other which were in fact common to both.
In his ambition to make a man of comparative substance of his son Jonas, the father had not dealt liberally by his daughter, and this had rankled in Sarah's heart. She had irritated her brother by continually raking up this grievance, and assuring him that a brother with natural feeling would, out of generosity of his heart, make amends for the injustice of the father.