Sheila understood very little of business, and Oscar not much more; but he had received confidences from their dying father, and had had interviews with the family lawyer, so that he was better acquainted with the prospect before them than the sister.
“Father thought at the last that he had made a mistake in holding aloof from the Cossarts. He wrote both to Uncle Cossart and Uncle Tom, and they are our guardians. I think they mean to be kind to us, though they could not at once get away to be here for the funeral. But Uncle Tom will come almost at once to look into things; and he is going to give me a berth at the works. He says that in his letter.”
“I call that the horridest thing of all!” flashed out Sheila. “You to be stuck down at a desk or something, in some chemical works, or whatever it is! Why can’t they let you finish your course at Oxford? Mother’s money would be lots for that!”
“Oh, yes; but then what would be the good?” asked Oscar gravely. “No, Sheila, I have seen too much of what Oxford does for poor men, to want to finish my three years there. I’ve no great gifts. I should only take an ordinary degree. I should have no chance of fellowship or tutorship there, and I’ve no gift for teaching. It’s much better really to go into business young, where one has a chance of pushing one’s way. Lots of fellows would give their ears for my chances at our uncles’ works. As I can’t be a country gentleman like our father, and be master of the dear old place, I’d sooner go right away and start fair at something altogether different.”
Sheila heaved a deep sigh as her eyes travelled from her brother’s grave face, out through the open window and across the familiar landscape of wood and water.
It was a lovely February day—one of those days which come as a foretaste of summer, when the sun shines with power, and all the air is full of scents of spring, and one forgets that winter is not yet gone, and begins to welcome the promise of the year.
“I never thought we should have to leave the dear old home. Is it certain that it must go, Oscar? Surely father could not have meant to leave things so bad for us?”
“Father was not fond of business,” said Oscar slowly. “He did not go into things carefully enough. The property was burdened when he came into it, and, you know, land has been going down ever since. We will not blame him, Sheila; other people have had losses too. Mr. Dart says that hundreds and thousands of people have been placed just as we are these last years. Indeed, we are better off than many; for there is that little fortune of our mother’s—five thousand pounds well invested—which brings us in a little income, and there may be something left from the estate when things are wound up, though it won’t be much, I can see. And we have the Cossarts, who will give us a home each. I think it is rather fine of them to come forward to help us, seeing how their sister was kept quite away from them after her marriage.”
Sheila looked up with a little quick, eager glance in her big grey eyes—those Irish eyes, which, like her name, she had inherited from her grandmother—her father’s mother—who had been a notable beauty in her day. Sheila was not a beauty; but she had an attractive face, and a winning and appealing manner. She had always been the pet and the darling of the house, and she seemed to claim affection and notice as a natural right.
“Couldn’t we live together, Oscar, just you and I together, in some dear little cottage, on our mother’s money? I would keep the house nice, and grow flowers in the garden; and you could find something to do; and we would be so happy in our little home.”