"I had thought of that, but the chances seemed to me as even that a step-mother would make the children unhappy as that my plan may. Joan is now—let me see—sixteen years old. She ought not to study this year; she is not as strong as she should be. She has been growing too fast and thinking too hard. The change to a year of home life and home cares will do her good."
"Is Joan to keep your house?"
"That was my idea. Jane has been filling her little head with romances, and letting her talk freely with the servants at the same time, until her conversation is a grotesque mixture of cultivation and picturesque terms culled from the servants' hall. Tom hears her in horror. But he needs to be shocked, so that's one good gained. I shall take Tom out to the furnaces with me, and start him with a crowbar in his hand to work his way up. It's the only chance for redeeming him. I haven't broken that piece of news to him yet. He thinks he is to go to college. I don't dare to send him there in his present trim. Milly has meant well, but she has almost ruined my boy with her money. Jane has done less harm to the others, but I must have my children with me for a year at least to straighten them out, and then I can decide what each one needs."
The Bishop looked grave. "It seems to me an awful experience ahead for you, and a pretty hard one for the young people, Tom. Aren't you just a little severe on them?"
"I don't think so; I know I don't mean to be. The truth is they have lost their dear mother, and life must be hard for us all at present. I think they ought to take their share of it. Shirking their burden, as I have been letting them, was certainly doing them harm. We are a motherless brood, and a motherless brood we will be, and work it out together."
The elder brother looked tenderly across the table at the younger. "You are a brave fellow, Tom. God bless you and your undertaking! I can't help feeling it's a wild experiment, but, as you have the courage to conceive it, you may have the character to bring it to a good end. Now that you have your little brood all collected here, let them roost in the garret as long as you like, and draw a free breath before you plunge in. Here come the youngsters now."
The study door was banged open, and three little children, two boys and a girl, hurtled into the room. The elder children were dragging the baby girl between them, and they were followed by Joan, who had plainly set out with the intention of quelling the riot, but forgot her errand by the way, and now wandered in dreamily after the procession. The Bishop's quiet study, kept always by his housekeeper as a half-sacred retreat, buzzed as if blue-bottle flies had flown in.
"Godfather, we can play here, can't we?"
The Bishop was godfather to all his brother's children.