“Ham Bright is made of different stuff. He had been brought up in the country, too, and his father was a Western man--from Cincinnati, at all events, though that isn’t West nowadays. No. Jack Ralston could never succeed at that--and I haven’t a ranch to give him, and I certainly won’t go and buy land out there now. I repeat that his only chance lay in law or business. Law would have done better. He had the advantage of having a degree to begin with, and I would have found him a partner, and there’s a lot of law connected with real estate which doesn’t need a genius to work it, and which is fairly profitable. But no! He wanted something active! That’s exactly what a kitten wants when it runs round after its own tail--and there’s about as much sense in it. Upon my word, there is!” “You’re very hard on him, uncle Robert. And I don’t think you’re quite reasonable. It was a good deal the old Admiral’s fault--” “I’m not examining the cause, I’m going over the facts,” said old Lauderdale, impatiently. “I tried him, and I very soon got to the end of him. He meant to do nothing. It was quite clear from the first. If he’d been a starving relation it would have been different. I should have made him work whether he liked it or not. As it was, I gave it up as a bad job. He wants to be idle, and he has the means to be idle if he’s willing to live on his mother. She has ten thousand dollars a year, and a house of her own, and they can live very well on that--just as well as they want to. When his mother dies that’s what Jack will have, and if he chooses to marry on it--” “You seem to forget that he’s married already--” “By Jove! I did! But it doesn’t change things in the least. My position is just the same as it was before. With ten thousand a year Katharine Ralston couldn’t support a family--” “Indeed, I could! I’m Katharine Ralston, and I should be--”