“Then a word more. Be careful here as to debts. Why not wind up your business, and retire with the profit you will make?” It was the same advice my mother had given, as I well knew.
“Hast thou been talking to my wife?” he said.
“No,” she replied, surprised; “may I?”
“Yes. As to going out of business, Gainor, I should be but a lost man. I am not as well-to-do as thou dost seem to think.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” cried my aunt. “I believe Thomas Willing is no better off in what you call this world’s gear, nor Franks, nor any of them. You like the game, and, after all, what is it but a kind of gambling? How do you know what hands the ocean holds? Your ventures are no better than my guineas cast down on the loo-table.” These two could never discuss anything but what it must end in a difference.
“Thou art a fool, Gainor, to talk such wicked nonsense before this boy. It is not worth an answer. I hear no good of Hugh of late. He hath been a concern to James Pemberton and to my friend, Nicholas Wain, and to me—to me. Thy gambling and idle redcoats are snares to his soul. He has begun to have opinions of his own as to taxes, and concerning the plain duty of non-resistance. As if an idle dog like him had any right to have an opinion at all!”
“Tut! tut!” cried Miss Wynne.
“I am not idle,” I said, “if I am a dog.”
He turned and seized me by the collar. “I will teach thee to answer thy elders.” And with this he shook me violently, and caught up a cane from a chair where he had laid it.
And now, once again, that disposition to be merry came over me, and, perfectly passive, I looked up at him and smiled. As I think of it, it was strange in a young fellow of my age.