the storm burst, but the cloud did not disperse, it only closed in more darkly over redcross. at the same time, as the bank authorities had foreseen, there was little or nothing of the wild, panic-stricken run on the capital which heralds and intensifies many a bank's fall. the losers went about their ordinary occupations. the rector preached, presided over meetings of the vestry and christian associations, and attended to his sick. doctor millar looked after his sick. colonel russell even went to the literary institute and read the newspapers as usual. every one of them wore his customary face, however abnormal the working of his heart. the redcross victims, and many another innocent man besides, behaved like gentlemen, englishmen, and christians. there was neither outward fuss nor fury.
the individual who came nearest to breaking down was naturally mr. carey. the very forbear
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ance with which he was treated cut to the quick the honest man who had been the tool of fools and knaves, brazening out their share of the business and contriving to escape with the least damage of anybody. they had been impecunious, trading upon other people's funds to begin with, and carey's bank's failure only left them where they were originally, under circumstances in which no reasonable person would expect redress from them. but poor james carey, who had been credulous and weak, was made of other stuff.
"i'm not easy about carey," the little doctor confided to his wife. "he was talking quite in a stupid, dazed way to russell and me this morning. do you observe his eyes? have you noticed the veins on his forehead and his throat? i'm far from comfortable about him." (as if he felt comfortable about anything at this period!) "i question much whether he'll ever get over it."
the public of redcross, who could remark the glassy look of the eyes, though they might not be qualified to speak of the condition of the veins, were still more struck by the immediate and melancholy effect the bank's failure had on mr. carey, when their attention was drawn to mrs. carey's behaviour. she was a woman who had seldom left her house save for her daily drive, now she walked out with her husband every fine after
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noon. her arm was drawn through his; but it was evident at the merest glance that she was supporting his failing steps and not he hers. she was a little, thin, somewhat wizened woman, but she looked equal to the task she had set herself, if a strong will would do it. there was a peculiarity to be seen in her eyes too, by those who could read the sign. it was a fixed desperate determination to keep her husband and the father of her children by sustaining his weakness with her strength, to fight and vanquish the enemy whose icy touch was already on his heart and brain.
but although there was little outward demonstration in redcross, much inner ferment and growing concern prevailed beneath the surface in what had been considered the principal houses in redcross—houses safe and sure as they were honourable in their ascendancy in the past. after the affairs of the bank were in the hands of liquidators, and it became clear that the ruin was great and complete, hope had hardly a hole or corner left to linger in, even in the hearts of the most simple and sanguine. the impending changes which must follow became the talk of the town, extending to circles far beyond that on which the blow had fallen. within the narrower limits, the anxious question what was to be done became the one engrossing, breathless subject of the hour.
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some of the reforms and retrenchments were marked by the spasmodic haste and severity which are apt to defeat themselves. these formed pendants to the spurts of grovelling distrust and quaking care for one's own welfare which caused wilkins the butcher to send in his quarter's bill before it was due to colonel russell, and have the debt discharged within the hour. in like manner, honeyman the grocer felt bound delicately to intimate to the careys that he declined to give the family more than a week's credit. he was answered in a formally polite note from mrs. carey to the effect that she had not intended to ask for any longer credit thenceforth, but from that date she would pay ready money. these offensively defensive acts and vulgar tokens that times were changed got wind, and were discussed in awed, indignant whispers by the mass of wilkins's and honeyman's fellow-townsmen.
there was little need to remind the poor careys of their altered circumstances, since it was in the bank house that some of the spasmodic sweeping reforms referred to had at once been practised by mrs. carey. she had always been the ruling spirit in the house, and people now said openly that it would have been well for everybody if she had been the ruling spirit in the bank also. she was a woman with locally aristocratic connections,
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of a more tangible kind than what constituted the millars' shadowy link with the county. her brother was sir charles luxmore of headley grange, and her nephew had allied himself to the peerage by marrying an honourable victoria brackenridge. all the greater the glaring recklessness and insolence of honeyman to take the word into his own mouth and refuse the careys credit. at the same time sir charles's place was nearer the town of nenthorn than that of redcross, and he did not deal with redcross tradesmen unless at election times. as for his daughter-in-law, the honourable victoria, she came so seldom to see her aunt-in-law that her face could not be said to be known in redcross streets, where she never entered even the "fancy shop" which the other county ladies patronized occasionally in search of missing shades of silks or wools.
mrs. carey had stooped considerably when she became the wife of mr. carey of the bank, though the bank was nominally his own, and the careys were a highly respectable family of old standing in redcross. when it came to that, there had only been two generations of the luxmores at headley grange, and the original baronet's rise to the honours of knighthood and a baronetage was due to his success and favour in high places as a fashionable physician. mrs. carey had not been very
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young at the date of her marriage, and her fortune was moderate enough, for the moneyed strength of her grandfather and father had gone to found a family and support a baronetage. still, she had been accustomed to carry herself, after she became mrs. carey, not in an obtrusive and offensive manner, but in a quiet, well-bred way, as one who had been undeniably better born and bred than her neighbours. indeed, under any circumstances she would have been a reserved woman, who would, in homely parlance, have kept herself to herself.
this was the woman who, with an absence of any sense of proportion, and an equal lack of humour, sometimes to be found in women of her class and character, together with an excess of mingled fiery zeal and feverish apprehension, hidden under a quiet exterior, took her measures on the very day after the bank's failure. these measures made a thorough exposure of the conclusion which she had arrived at, and subjected herself and the whole family to immediate privations, for which they were unprepared. they were injurious as well as useless and uncalled for, and had a ludicrous side. acting for mr. carey, she dismissed the coachman and the gardener, paying them their month's wages which were unearned. she let the valuable horses take their chance of casual grooming and feeding, till they were sold off.
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she left the garden at the most critical time of the year, as the old gardener said with tears in his eyes, when the young vegetables were only coming into use, and the whole fruit would be lost unless it were properly seen to. the wood pigeons would have all the later seeds springing in the beds, and the place on which he had bestowed so much time and labour would lie waste, instead of providing a considerable part of the food of the household in summer and autumn. "but there was never no sense in them ladies like missus, no more in their sparing than in their spending." at one fell swoop she dismissed her own maid, the cook, and the parlour-maid, retaining only a young table-maid to "do" for the family.
mrs. carey had hitherto been an indulgent mother, but all at once she told the scandalized university dandy and failure, cyril, that he must brush his own boots and help his schoolboy brothers to clean the knives, if he were not satisfied with what a maid-of-all-work could accomplish in these departments.
as for ella and phyllis, looking on aghast at the wholesale destruction of what they had been accustomed to consider the ordinary comforts—not to say the luxuries and refinements of their home—the girls were informed that they were not to go back to miss burridge's, where their quarters were
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paid in advance. the younger brothers might continue at the grammar school, because the fees were low; they would be kept out of harm, and they could do nothing else to speak of. but ella and phyllis had better lose no time in learning to make beds, sweep floors, and lay tables. "for myself, i have your father to see to," said mrs. carey in her somewhat deep and strong voice, the measured steadiness of which had acquired a ringing vibration. "i do not mean to conceal from you that dr. millar is apprehensive on your father's account, and i intend to devote myself to him. we must pull him through and save him at any cost, though his health and nerves may be shattered from this date, and he may never be able to retrieve his losses and those of other people, which, of course, press most heavily upon him. we can try at least for the credit as well as the life which is so dear to us, and never have it said for his sake, still more than for ours, that he was blind and imposed upon, and then let himself slip out of the misery which he had helped to bring about, while others who were not accountable were condemned to pay the penalty."
mrs. carey would fain not have touched a farthing of the income allowed the family till the bank's affairs were wound up—that winding-up which dr. millar said might last throughout his life.
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she would willingly have resigned the bulk of her small fortune in favour of the bank's creditors, but marriage settlements and trustees are stubborn facts to deal with. all she could do was to stint and punish herself and her family in the manner described, and inasmuch as the stinting and punishment were done in good faith, doubtless they would serve their purpose and have their reward.
the rector was a widower. hitherto he had kept an efficient housekeeper and chaperon for his daughters, the elder of whom must now take the housekeeper's place. he, too, put down what had served him for a carriage. it was remarkable how uniformly the first idea of retrenchment took this form in redcross, but it was natural under the circumstances. it was difficult to say at once what was to be cut down from a not very extensive list of supernumeraries, unless one was prepared to make a clean sweep like mrs. carey. the rector had been simple enough in his tastes and habits. he was a member of the church of england temperance society, and so had no valuable cellar of wine to dispose of. he did not possess more silver plate than was wanted for the rectory table. his library contained no rare and costly books. the very carriage in question was no more than one of those pony-phaetons with regard to which bishop pattison appealed, in one
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of his letters from melanesia to his brethren in peaceful, pleasant country rectories and vicarages at home, asking the astonished clergymen, with their clergywomen in the background, if they really considered the clerical equipage, with its modest expense, equivalent to a divine institution? the rector proved his freedom from the superstition by doing away with the phaeton and its pair, and falling back, as he was a spare man, on an old pony which the children had ridden by turns. though he was not a book fancier, he had entertained a fondness for art, and since he could not indulge in much picture buying, had dabbled in old prints, of which he had rather a fine collection. this all at once vanished along with the phaeton.
bell hewett, the second daughter, who was several years younger than her sister lucy, but had left miss burridge's some time before, and was as far removed from a school-girl as annie millar herself, unexpectedly appeared again on the familiar benches. she was not there as a junior governess, she was not sufficiently clever or educated, since miss burridge sought to work up to the new standards. poor bell was in her old place, in her old classes, as a pupil once more, only she sat looking deeply affronted, and nervously trying to make up for lost time, among a set of young girls like may millar.
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there was not much difference made in colonel russell's establishment. but this was caused by one of two things. there was the probability of the establishment's soon being broken up, if its master succeeded in getting a post which should enable him to return to india. on the other hand, the second mrs. russell was too foolish and self-willed to comprehend without a prolonged struggle how she and her babies could get along unless they were fortified by every imaginable aid in the shape of an expensive table, fine clothes, a couple of under nurses, and a boy in buttons. fanny russell, the colonel's grown-up daughter by his first wife, looked sad enough over the prospect of her father's departure at his age, with his shattered constitution, and over what was to become of herself, left behind with the frivolous, unreasonable young stepmother with whom fanny had never been able to agree.
the millars were still in the old quaintly spacious house with its great bowery garden, for the plausible reason that dr. millar could not, on the spur of the moment, find a purchaser or an available tenant. he took some credit to himself for having more breadth of view and controlling common sense than poor mrs. carey, otherwise he might have rushed off and crammed his family into a small inconvenient house, for which, at the same time, he
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would have had to pay rent, that was not called for, unless in the form of rates and taxes, where his old house was concerned. there might be something to say on the other side of the question, but as yet that had not occurred to dr. and mrs. millar. however, the doctor's brougham, like the rector's phaeton, was a thing of the past. he trudged manfully on foot to his patients. there are few evils which do not offer some compensations. it really seemed as if the doctor's deprivation, which weighed heavily on his wife's mind, served to divert it from other trials, by the degree to which it was occupied in looking after her husband's changes of coats and boots, in order to ward off evil consequences to his health.
the four girls were so engrossed with what had happened and was going to happen to them from the failure of mr. carey's bank, that they had largely lost sight of the first wooer in the family. this was strong evidence of the extent to which their minds were filled by the rapid descent of what they called poverty on themselves and their neighbours. rose and may ceased to have qualms of conscience when they caught sight of tom robinson fishing in the dewes, not knowing what desperate promptings of despair might not suddenly lay hold of a rejected and forlorn lover. they left off glancing covertly at him in his pew
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at church, for the purpose of detecting the earliest symptoms of a broken heart and a galloping consumption. instead they speculated on whether bell hewett would have had a new hat if it had not been for the bank's failure; and whether her brother's absence from home was owing to his having gone to london for the first look at the columns of the advertising newspapers, and that he might be on the spot to apply in person at the addresses given, and to haunt the agency offices, as young men are represented doing in novels.
inevitably tom robinson's recent intercourse with the family had been confined to a formal call or two, awkward and unpleasant to all concerned. only dr. millar brought him into the conversation occasionally, dealing with his name in the spirit of a faithful partisan. "that good fellow robinson did not draw out a farthing of his deposit at the bank after disquieting rumours must have reached him. carey tells me that robinson, in place of seeking to be reassured, did his best to reassure him, carey; told him never to mind him, he could lie out of the money; he was willing to let others who had more need be paid first. ah! well, it is good to have it in your power to be both just and generous, and it is still better to have a heart to use the power. robinson has acted handsomely throughout, in short, like the gentleman he is. i
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wonder if his behaviour on this occasion will weigh with snobs against the iniquity of his having a shop. i thought thackeray had done something to demolish similar rubbish when he described the young cads who gave the schoolboy dobbin the nickname 'figs.'"
the speaker was guilty of glaring rather fiercely at his daughters, assembled for afternoon tea. they became eminently innocent and meek-looking on the instant, but when the sisterhood were left to themselves annie delivered her opinion with admirable fairness and candour.
"i am sure i am glad that tom robinson should behave himself like a gentleman, but that does not make his trade a profession fit for a gentleman, neither does it render the man, with his lack of ambition and his commonplaceness and dulness, an interesting specimen of humanity."
"not a man that a woman would care to die for," said rose, wrinkling her forehead and crumpling up her nose till her face was half its natural length. "oh, i say, think of any woman being so infatuated as to be willing to die for an insignificant, foxy-headed, well-bred shopkeeper!"
"don't be slangy, rose," annie rebuked her sister.
"still i am very glad," said dora's soft voice quite distinctly, and while she blushed furiously
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she reared her little neck with an unconscious gesture. it said plainly, "yes, i am glad that the man who sought me for his wife has shown himself liberal and merciful, so that i can always think of him and his wishes with respect and gratitude."
"and so am i glad," agreed may warmly. "it is so nice that 'robinson's' has not made its master grasping and greedy."
"i don't know that rapacity is confined to trade," admitted annie. "you ought to know, may, for you have a good deal of intercourse with royalty in your reading; but i have a notion that it has been the distinguishing characteristic of a good many kings and emperors."
annie and rose had grown more and more eager to take up their burdens from the first day they were aware that there were burdens for them to take up. they were becoming positively enamoured of pushing their fortunes and encountering adventures—not in the least understanding, in spite of their bright wits, what the burdens, fortunes, adventures might mean. the two sisters' enthusiasm was just kept within bounds by two drags on its quicksilver quality. these laggard spirits, dora and may, weighed upon their more enterprising companions. neither could annie and rose quite shut their eyes to the increase of wrinkles on their father's face, and to their mother's red eyes when
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she came down of a morning. if it had not been for these small drawbacks, it is to be feared that annie and rose would have arrived at such a height of tête exaltée that they would have begun to rejoice in their own and their neighbours' misfortunes. there was something so fresh and exciting in looking about for openings and careers, in calculating how they were to earn their bread—which would taste so sweet to those who earned it—and at the same time save money. they were not quite so insane as to propose to amass fortunes and fling them into the gulf caused by the crumbling away of the late bank in order to redeem their father's pledge as a shareholder. but surely in the course of a year or two they might help him, and generally assist in keeping the old folks at home in state and bounty.
annie and rose looked on working for themselves in a very different light from that in which they regarded tom robinson's sticking to his father's and grandfather's shop. to be sure, they did not start with any intention of keeping shops. even if they had done so, the descent might have been redeemed by a dash of sentiment and romance which did not apply in the least to a man with only himself to look to, a man of independent means to boot, who had forgotten what was expected from a gentleman.
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there was no danger of dora or may's being infected with their sisters' frame of mind. dora and may were mortally ashamed of themselves. they feared they were not of the stuff of which heroines—not to say martyrs—were made. they looked back almost as fondly and sadly as their mother looked on the old state of matters. they dreaded with a shrinking terror going away from home, leaving their people, facing the cold, critical world, being left to their own slender resources. it was bad enough in dora, but it was really dreadfully disappointing in may, with her youthful learning, to have so little spirit and courage; still so it was, and in the meantime there was no help for it. dora might have been glad for purely personal reasons to get away from redcross for a time; but she was not thrown into tom robinson's company, and the fact of his refusal had been kept so quiet by the millars that, unless he himself betrayed it, which was not likely, the greatest gossip in the place could only suspect the truth.
it was a small comfort to the unheroic pair, and perhaps to annie and rose also, though they did not consciously take it into account, that all the older professional men in the town, the leaders and those who were on most intimate terms, were "in the same boat," as dr. millar had said. but there was a family named dyer lately settled at red
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cross, a semi-retired stockbroker, with his wife and daughters, who had come from london to occupy redcross manor-house—naturally they had nothing to do with carey's bank, and were still supposed to be rolling in wealth, as they had been reported from the first. however, there was a notion that the dyers' riches had not been acquired in any very refined fashion. cyril carey had always insisted, as he settled his collar and twirled his cane, that stockbroker was simply pawnbroker writ large. anyhow the dyers were not so distinguished in mind and manners as they were wealthy. old conservative folks sighed at the idea of redcross manor-house, which had belonged to the cliftons from time immemorial, till the last clifton fell into the hands of the jews before he was twenty, and was driven to break the entail by the time he was forty, passing to a family of dyers. the best that could be said of them was, that the old people were comparatively inoffensive and the young were presentable. they were inclined to be friendly with the town—it might be till they could secure a footing with the county people, if that were possible. they dressed well, thanks to their milliners and dressmakers, kept a good table, a good stable, and a good staff of domestics, and furnished redcross—especially young redcross—with country-house hospitalities and gay gather
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ings, which they would otherwise have lacked. yet fanatics of young people like annie and rose millar, who were persuaded that they were now well acquainted with a reverse of fortune, began to behave as if they considered it was no longer the crême de la crême of human experience to amass and retain a fortune. they began to pity the rampantly prosperous family for the lack on their part of any knowledge of life's vicissitudes, with their trumpet call to earnest effort and supreme self-devotion—all that makes man or woman worthy of the name. as for the younger dyers, they were content to echo the sentiments of their mouthpiece, the head of their house. he spoke in the privacy of his family with a half-affable, half-contemptuous concern for those unfortunate beggars of uppish redcross townspeople who had all come to smash by the failure of one paltry twopenny-halfpenny local bank.
the millars were constantly hearing of fresh examples of hardship, and courage to meet the hardship, piquing and inciting them to enterprise and self-sacrifice on their own account. now it would be may, who would come in from miss burridge's with a blanched face, crying, "oh! you girls, do you know ella carey has gone and is not coming back again? phyllis is crying her eyes out, because she and ella were never separated before.
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no, ella has not gone to be a lady-help, as she thought she might do, after she had got a little more practice in washing dishes and peeling potatoes. it is nothing bad, except that she is gone for good and all, and it has been so sudden. and mrs. carey says ella is not to come back. one of her sisters, the one without children, mrs. tyrrel, wrote and offered to take either of the girls. and what do you think mrs. carey said? that ella must go, because if she went there would be a mouth less to feed. she was sorry, because she said it was giving up ella, and she told her she must not expect to have much more to do with phyllis and the rest of them at home, for it would be out of the question, in the different circumstances of the tyrrels and careys, for them to carry on frequent or intimate intercourse. ella would have refused if she had dared, for she is so fond of phyllis and all of them, even of her mother, though she has grown very hard since the bank failed. she used to let the girls have their own way. don't you remember, rose, she allowed us to dress up for charades out of her wardrobe? why, you once wore her wedding-gown pinned up round you. but mrs. carey would not give ella any choice. she repeated that there would be one mouth the less to feed. she said ella was the elder, and it was her duty to her father and his
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creditors to go. so all poor ella's things were sought out and packed up last night—the letter only came yesterday. she has had no time to bid rose and me, or any of her other friends, good-bye. she started with cyril early this morning, and i don't know what phyllis will do without her."
"she must do the best she can," said annie promptly, "and occupy herself with something better than gossiping with you when she chances to meet you coming from school. i suppose that was the manner in which you heard all this; i don't think mrs. carey will approve of such a waste of time."
"but, annie," pled may, with her dark eyes ready to brim over, "poor phyllis has only me now, and she has a great many messages to go, because their single servant has so much work to do in the house that she cannot get out marketing. mrs. carey is always walking or sitting with mr. carey. if it were not so, phyllis is sure that her mother would go out and not mind taking the market-basket herself—a rough, heavy market-basket. the careys' servants used to complain because one of them was expected to carry it in the mornings. phyllis is glad to let me have it sometimes, her arms get tired and ache so. you see jack and dick are not often home from school
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in time, and then they have the boots and knives to clean. cyril would carry it for her after it was dark, but mrs. carey won't let her go out then, and sends her off to bed that she may get up earlier for what she has to do in the morning."
that rough market-basket over which the careys' former servants had grumbled, was like a badge of honour in certain shining eyes—far more so than thirza dyer's thoroughbred, or camilla and gussy dyer's exquisite hats and dainty parasols. even annie millar was not too old or too wise to refrain from wishing that mrs. millar, who still would not let her daughters soil their fingers if she could help it, had sent them out marketing in their native town, each in her turn flourishing a market-basket.
at another time it would be rose who would arrive flushed and breathless with the great piece of news that ned hewett had taken the post of station-master at a small station somewhere on the yorkshire moors. he had done it when nothing else turned up, without waiting to consult his father. but the rector had not forbidden him when he heard. steadiness and punctuality had always been ned's strong points, so that, though he had not taken his degree at the university, and his old masters had said they were not surprised to hear it, he might be trusted not to wreck trains, slay
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their passengers, and find himself tried for manslaughter. the difficulty was to fancy a big, slow fellow like ned rushing here and there in a noisy, fussy little station. after all, it would only be noisy and fussy at long intervals, and on rare occasions, "somewhere on the yorkshire moors." ned might have time and space to walk about in. but what of the uniform? would the poor boy—they had all known him as a boy—who had once cherished the notion of going into the army, have to wear a railway company's coat and a station-master's cap? how funny it sounded! well, not altogether funny. there were dora and may crying at the bare anticipation. if they were ever on the yorkshire moors, and had to greet ned in this extraordinary guise, it would be awkward for all parties, to say the least. what were they thinking of? of course they would be proud to greet him when he was twice the man that he had ever been. no doubt cyril carey would be glad to have ned's chance; cyril, who had renounced his delicate plush vests and indian gold chains and charms, his loitering and dawdling, and taken to a shabby shooting-suit and spade-husbandry. he was getting rid of his time and keeping out of his mother's way by digging aimlessly in the garden. he was inquiring, in a desultory fashion, all over redcross for any opening in an office which he
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could fill. he was not likely to find such an opening unless it were made for him out of charity. he had not been trained to office work, and he was far from having ned hewett's reputation for steadiness and punctuality. if tom robinson should be the charitable man and ask cyril, a schoolfellow and college chum, to help him with his accounts, the head of "robinson's" would have to be at the trouble of running up every column of figures over again. cyril might ride to hounds and row in a boat-race with the best; he might even have some elegant acquaintance with the renaissance and old french, and be capable of distinguishing himself in stately latin verse, though that sounded more than doubtful when he had been plucked at his university—the inhabitants of redcross did not, as a rule, pretend to be judges in such matters. what they did know, because it had oozed out some time before, was that cyril carey, though a banker's son, was lamentably weak in arithmetic, and his handwriting would have been held a disgrace to any shop-boy.
money was required to start lads in the world in the humblest fashion. ned hewett wanted an outfit, and if possible furniture for his station-house, that he might not begin on credit. even girls, though they had been a good deal set aside in such consideration, could not enter on an independent
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career without money any more than boys could. the millars were therefore thankful that mrs. millar had a little money of her own, not above a hundred and fifty pounds a year, settled upon her from the first, by one of those marriage contracts which are so hard to break, and she could use it to supply what was needed for the girls, who were going into the world with such dauntless spirits and light hearts.
