“My time seldom hangs heavy on my hands,” said Mr. Charles. “If you live to my age, you will learn that time is short--far too short for what a man has to do. I am sixty, and the days run through my hands like sea-sand. Many and many is the thing I have to put aside for want of time; and most likely I’ll die with heaps of odds and ends left incomplete.” “I don’t see any reason,” said Fanshawe, in his levity; “at sixty it appears to me you have much more certainty of life before you than at half the age. A man who lives till sixty may surely live to a hundred if he pleases. By that time all the dangers must be over.” “And I suppose,” said Mr. Charles, not quite pleased to hear his sixty years treated so lightly, “you hope to do as much yourself.” “I don’t know,” said the young man, laughing and shrugging his shoulders. “Seriously, do you think it’s worth the while? I am more than half way, and it has not been so delightful. No; a short life and a merry one must be the best.” “That was poor Tom’s idea,” said Mr. Charles, with the look of a man who is improving the occasion. His own feeling was that no sermon could have pointed a sharper moral. At the sound of Tom’s name, little Milly began to cry; not that she knew very much of Tom, but the vague pain and sorrow which filled the house had made his name the emblem of everything that was melancholy and grievous to her. Milly’s tears gave the last aggravation to Fanshawe’s impatience. “Poor Tom!” he cried; “he had a merry life. Better thirty years of that than a long, dull blank, with nothing particular in it. He thought so, and so should I. I don’t like--forgive me for saying so--to think of poor Heriot as a warning. On the whole, I should not object to the same sort of end. Better that than to drink the cup to the dregs--” “As I am doing, you mean,” said Mr. Charles. “No, indeed--far from that. As I should do, if such were to be my fate. It depends, I suppose, upon the groove one gets into,” said Fanshawe, with a short, uneasy laugh. And then he began to talk hurriedly to Milly about the chances of a voyage to the May. “I do not understand that young man,” said Mr. Charles, privately, to Marjory. “May, my dear, you must try your hand. There is good about him. If there had not been good about him, he would never have done what he did for Tom. But he thinks Pitcomlie dull, and he thinks a long life undesirable. I should like to understand the lad; and as we all have cause to be grateful to him, I wish you would try your hand.” “If you wish it, uncle,” said Marjory.