It was in vain that Frank protested against the pride which refused to receive anything from the Irving estate. Roger was firm as a rock. “I may be foolish,” he said to Lawyer Schofield, who was often at Millbank, and who once tried to persuade him into some settlement with Frank. “I may be foolish, but I cannot take a penny more than the terms of the will give to me. I have lived for years on what did not belong to me. Let that suffice, and do not try to tempt me into doing what I should hate myself for. I have been accustomed to habits of luxury, which I shall find it difficult to overcome; just as I shall at first find it hard to settle down into a steady business, and seek for patronage with which to earn my bread. But I am comparatively young yet. I can study and catch up in my profession. I passed a good examination years ago. I have tried by reading not to fall far behind the present age. I shall do very well, I’m sure.” Then he spoke of Schodick, where he had decided to go. “Some men would choose the West as a larger field in which to grow, and at first I looked that way myself; but Schodick has great attractions for me. It was my mother’s home. I shall live in the very house where she was born. You know my father gave me the farm, and though it is rocky and hilly and sterile,—much of it,—I would rather go there than out upon the prairies. I shall be very near the town, which is growing rapidly, and there is a chance of my getting in with a firm whose senior member has recently died. If I do, it will be the making of me, and you may yet hear of Roger Irving from Schodick as a great man.” Roger had worked himself up to quite a pitch of enthusiasm, and seemed much like his olden self as he talked of his plans to Lawyer Schofield, who had never admired or respected him so much as he did when he saw him putting the best face upon matters and bearing his reverses so patiently. Everybody knew now that he was going to Schodick, in New Hampshire, and that Hester and Aleck were going with him. Both seemed to have renewed their youth to a most marvellous degree, and Hester’s form was never more erect, or her step more elastic, than during those early summer days, when, between the times of her ministering to Magdalen, of whom she still had the care, she went over the house, selecting here and there articles which she declared were _hers_, and with which Mrs. Walter Scott did not meddle.