"There you are again!" exclaimed Aunt Charlotte, clicking her needles energetically. "Did one ever hear such rubbish? It all comes from those outlandish books you're always poring over. If you'd only take _my_ advice, you'd read something solid, and sensible, and improving, like 'Self Help,' by Dr Smiles. That would be of some use to you, but these others----" "I read a whole chapter of it once," said Austin. "I can scarcely believe it myself, but I did. It's the most immoral, sordid, selfish book that was ever printed. It deifies Success--success in money-making--success of the coarsest and most materialistic kind. It is absolutely unspiritual and degrading. It nearly made me sick." "Be silent!" cried Aunt Charlotte, horrified. "How dare you talk like that? I will not sit still and hear you say such things. Few books have had a greater influence upon the age. Degrading? Why, it's been the making of thousands!" "Thousands of soulless money-grubbers," retorted Austin. "That's what it has made. Men without an idea or an aspiration above their horrible spinning-jennies and account-books. I hate your successful stockbrokers and shipowners and manufacturers. They are an odious race. Wasn't it a stockjobber who thought Botticelli was a cheese? Everyone knows the story, and I believe the hero of it was either a stockjobber or a man who made screws in Birmingham." Aunt Charlotte let her knitting fall on her lap in despair. "Austin," she said, in her most solemn tones, "I never regretted your poor mother's death as I regret it at this moment." "Why, auntie?" he asked, surprised. "Perhaps she would have understood you better; perhaps she might even have been able to manage you," replied the poor lady. "I confess that you're beyond me altogether. Do you know what it was she said to me upon her death-bed? 'Charlotte,' she said, 'my only sorrow in dying is that I shall never be able to bring up my boy. Who will ever take such care of him as I should?' You were then two days old, and the very next day she died. I've never forgotten it. She passed away with that sorrow, that terrible anxiety, tearing at her heart. I took her place, as you know, but of course I was only a makeshift. I often wonder whether she is still as anxious about you as she was then."