a castle in Ireland and a seat in Parliament; but in fact he would. I know him. Think what you will of his ambition, it has this much of sincerity, that he is willing to pinch and starve for it. This, too, I have proved."
"You might add, mother," interposed Sam, "that he would like all these the better with a little success to season them."
"No, I will add that he has perhaps enough respect for me to listen to my entreaties and allow Charles to choose for himself. And this for the moment, sir, is all I can promise, though I thank you from the bottom of my heart."
"Tut, woman!" snapped the apothecary. "Close with the offer and don't be a fool. My brother, sir, may be pig-headed—sit down, Susanna!"
"You and I, sir," said Garrett Wesley, "as childless men, are in no position to judge a parent's feelings."
"Children? Let me tell you that I had a son, sir, and he broke my heart. He is in India now, I believe; a middle-aged rake. I give you leave to find and adopt him, so long as you don't ask me to see his face again. One was too many for me, and here's a woman with ten children alive—Heaven knows how many she's buried—ten children alive and half-clothed, and herself the youngest of twenty-five!" He broke off and chuckled. "Did you ever hear tell, sir, what old Dr. Martin said after baptizing Susanna here? Someone asked him 'How many children had Dr. Annesley?' 'I forget for the moment,' said the doctor, but 'tis either two dozen or a quarter of a hundred.' And here's a woman, sir, with such a sense of her offspring's importance that she higgles over accepting a fortune for one of 'em!"
"Can you suffer this, ma'am?" Garrett Wesley began. But the apothecary for the moment was neither to hold nor to bind.
"Sam! You have a grain of sense in your head. Don't sit there mum-chance, man! Speak up and tell your mother not to be a fool. You are no child; you know your father, and that, if given one chance in a hundred to act perversely, he'll take it as sure as fate. For heaven's sake persuade your mother to use common caution and keep his finger out of this pie!"
"Nay, sir," answered Sam, "I think she has the right of it, that my father ought to be told; and that the chances are he will leave it to Charles to decide."
Matthew Wesley flung up his hands. "'Tis a conspiracy of folly! Upon my professional word, you ought all to be strait-waistcoated!" He glared around, found speech again, and pounced upon Sam. "A pretty success you've made of your father's ambitions—you, with your infatuation for that rogue Atterbury, and your born gift of choosing the cold side of favour! You might have been Freind's successor, Head Master of Westminster School! Where's your chance now? You'll not even get the under-mastership, I doubt. Some country grammar school is your fate—I see it; and all for lack of sense. If you lacked learning, lacked piety, lacked—"
"Excuse me, sir, but these are matters I have no mind to discuss with you. When Freind retires Nicoll will succeed him, and Nicoll deserves it. Whether I get Nicoll's place or no, God will decide, who knows if I deserve it. Let it rest in His hands. But when you speak of Bishop Atterbury, and when I think of that great heart breaking in exile, why then, sir, you defeat yourself and steel me against my little destinies by the example of a martyr."
He said it awkwardly, pulling the while at his bony knuckles; but he said it with a passion which cowed his uncle for the moment, and drew from his mother a startled, almost expectant, look. Yet she knew that Sam's eyes could never hold (for her joy and terror) the underlying fire which had shone in her youngest boy's that morning, and which mastered her—strong woman though she was—in her husband's. And this was the tragic note in her love for Sam—the more tragic because never sounded. Sam had learning, diligence, piety, a completely honest mind; he had never caused her an hour's reasonable anxiety; only—to this eldest son she had not transmitted his father's genius, that one divine spark which the Epworth household claimed for its sons as a birthright. An exorbitant, a colossal claim! Yet these Wesleys made it as a matter of course. Did the father know that one of his sons had disappointed it? Sam knew, at any rate; and Sam's mother knew; and each, aware of the other's knowledge, tried pitifully to ignore it.
Matthew Wesley bounced from his chair, unlocked the glazed doors of a bookcase behind him and pulled forth a small volume.
"Here you have it, sir, 'Maggots: by a Scholar'—that's my brother. 'Poems on Several Subjects never before Handled,'—that's the man all over. You may wager that if any man of sense had ever hit on these subjects, my brother had never come within a mile of 'em. Listen: 'The Grunting of a Hog,' 'To my Gingerbread Mistress,' 'A Box like an Egg,' 'Two Soldiers killing one another for a Groat,' 'A Pair of Breeches,' 'A Cow's Tail'—there's titles for you! Cow's tail, indeed! And here, look you, is the author's portrait for a frontispiece, with a laurel-wreath in his hair and a maggot in place of a parting! 'Maggots'! He began with 'em and he'll end with 'em. Maggots!" He slammed the two covers of the book together and tossed it across the table.
Mr. Garrett Wesley, during this tirade, had fallen back upon the attitude of a well-bred man who has dropped in upon a painful family quarrel and cannot well escape. He had taken his hat and stood with his gaze for the most part fastened on the carpet, but lifted now and then when directly challenged by the apothecary's harangue. The contemned volume skimmed across the table and toppled over at his feet. With much gravity he stooped and picked it up; and as he did so, heard Mrs. Wesley addressing him.
"And the curious part of it is," she was saying calmly, "that my brother-in-law means all this in kindness!"
"No, I don't," snapped Matthew; and in the next breath, "well, yes, I do then. Susanna, I beg your pardon, but you'd provoke a saint." He dropped into his chair. "You know well enough that if I lose my temper, 'tis for your sake and the girls'."
"I know," she said softly, covering his hand with hers. "But you must e'en let us go our feckless way. Sir,"—she looked up—"must this decision be made to-night?"
"Not at all, ma'am, not at all. The lad, if you will, may choose when he comes of age; I have another string to my bow, should he refuse the offer. But meantime, and while 'tis uncertain to which of us he'll end by belonging, I hope I may bear my part in his school fees."
"But that, to some extent, must bind him."
"No: for I propose to keep my share of it dark, with your leave. But you shall hear further of this by letter. May I say, that if I chose his father's son, I have come to-day to set my heart on his mother's? I wish you good night, ma'am! Good night, sirs!"
CHAPTER IV.
In a corner of the Isle of Axholme, in Lincolnshire, and on the eastern slope of a knoll a few feet above the desolate fenland, six sisters were seated. The eldest, a woman of thirty-three, held a book open in her lap and was reading aloud from it; reading with admirable expression and a voice almost masculine, rich as a deep-mouthed bell. And, while she read, the glory of the verse seemed to pass into her handsome, peevish face.
Her listeners heard her contentedly—all but one, who rested a little lower on the slope, with one knee drawn up, her hands clasped about it, and her brows bent in a frown as she gazed from under her sun-bonnet across the level landscape to the roofs and church-tower of Epworth, five miles away, set on a rise and facing the evening sun. Across the field below, hemmed about and intersected with dykes of sluggish water, two wagons moved slowly, each with a group of labourers about it: for to-night was the end of the oat-harvest, and they were carrying the last sheaves of Wroote glebe. After the carrying would come supper, and the worn-out cart-horse which had brought it afield from the Parsonage stood
