Harry Joscelyn; vol. 1 of 3Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
Harry Joscelyn; vol. 1 of 3
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Families -- England -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
“There is a good deal amiss with me,” he said. Harry had been debating
the point with himself for the last half-hour, whether he should fully
confide in his uncle or not. He could not but feel that it would be
wiser to deal lightly with the fact of his exclusion from his father’s
house; but he was so angry that he could not be prudent, and the moment
that he had an opportunity of speech his temper broke out.
“I was not in bed all last night,” he said; “I was on the road like a
tramp, Uncle Henry. My father turned me out of the house--”
Three lines came across Mr. Henry Joscelyn’s brow--three horizontal,
well-marked lines. These were two too many. When he was sympathetic a
slight indentation over his eyebrows was all that appeared. The second
meant doubt, the third annoyance.
“Dear me!” he said, “how did that happen? I fear you must have been
doing something to displease your father.”
“Who can help displeasing my father?” cried Harry. “I am sure, Uncle
Henry, you know him well enough. I had been doing nothing wrong. I had
been trying to get him to interest himself in my affairs. He has never
done anything for me, it is you that have done everything for me. I laid
before him a chance I’ve got. I meant at any rate to come and talk it
all over with you; but in the first place I thought it was as well to
ask a question about my mother’s money--”
“Ah--that was not quite an ingratiating way of opening the matter, I
fear,” Uncle Henry said.
“Why not?” cried Harry, forgetting all the prudential rules he had been
trying to impose upon himself. “My mother was willing, and when it would
have advanced my interests--and of course I should have paid as good a
per-centage as anybody else. Surety if there is anything a man can have
a claim upon,” he added, argumentatively, “it must be his mother’s
money. I mayn’t have any right to touch the family property, as I am
only a younger son, and all that--and especially as there are such a lot
of us; but my mother’s money--when it is doing nothing, only lying at
interest. Surely a man has a claim upon that.”
“The man that has a claim upon that is your father, I should say. I
never knew a man yet that liked any questions about his wife’s money,”
said Mr. Joscelyn; “whether it’s in her own power or in his, its not a
nice thing to interfere with. You have your own ways of looking at
things, you young fellows; but in your place I would have said nothing
about that. I didn’t know your mother had any money,” he added, in an
indifferent tone.
“It is only--a thousand pounds, Uncle Henry: not what you would call a
fortune--”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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