When Hobson Newcome’s boys came home for the holidays, their kind uncle was for treating them to the sights of the town, but here Virtue again interposed and laid its interdict upon pleasure. “Thank you, very much, my dear Colonel,” says Virtue, “there never was surely such a kind, affectionate, unselfish creature as you are, and so indulgent for children, but my boys and yours are brought up on a very different plan. Excuse me for saying that I do not think it is advisable that they should even see too much of each other. Clive’s company is not good for them.”
“Great heavens, Maria!” cries the Colonel, starting up, “do you mean that my boy’s society is not good enough for any boy alive?”
Maria turned very red: she had said not more than she meant, but more than she meant to say. “My dear Colonel, how hot we are! how angry you Indian gentlemen become with us poor women! Your boy is much older than mine. He lives with artists, with all sorts of eccentric people. Our children are bred on quite a different plan. Hobson will succeed his father in the bank, and dear Samuel I trust will go into the Church. I told you, before, the views I had regarding the boys: but it was most kind of you to think of them—most generous and kind.”
“That nabob of ours is a queer fish,” Hobson Newcome remarked to his nephew Barnes. “He is as proud as Lucifer, he is always taking huff about one thing or the other. He went off in a fume the other night because your aunt objected to his taking the boys to the play. She don’t like their going to the play. My mother didn’t either. Your aunt is a woman who is uncommon wideawake, I can tell you.”
“I always knew, sir, that my aunt was perfectly aware of the time of the day,” says Barnes, with a bow.
“And then the Colonel flies out about his boy, and says that my wife insulted him! I used to like that boy. Before his father came he was a good lad enough—a jolly brave little fellow.”
“I confess I did not know Mr. Clive at that interesting period of his existence,” remarks Barnes.
“But since he has taken this madcap freak of turning painter,” the uncle continues, “there is no understanding the chap. Did you ever see such a set of fellows as the Colonel had got together at his party the other night? Dirty chaps in velvet coats and beards? They looked like a set of mountebanks. And this young Clive is going to turn painter!”
“Very advantageous thing for the family. He’ll do our pictures for nothing. I always said he was a darling boy,” simpered Barnes.
“Darling jackass!” growled out the senior. “Confound it, why doesn’t my brother set him up in some respectable business? I ain’t proud. I have not married an earl’s daughter. No offence to you, Barnes.”