"So I was--so I was. Well, he's to have it all, I say--every mite, and welcome. I've had a pretty tough life in my time--you can tell it from my hands, suh--but I ain't begrudging it if it leaves the boy a bit better off. Lord, thar's many and many a night,when I was little and my stepfather kicked me out of doors without a bite, that I used to steal into somebody or other's cow-shed and snuggle for warmth into the straw--yes, and suck the udders of the cows for food, too. Oh, I've had a hard enough life, for all the way it looks now--and I'm not saying that if the choice was mine I'd go over it agin even as it stands to-day. We're set here for better or for worse, that's my way of thinking, and if thar's any harm comes of it Providence has got to take a share of the blame." "Hardly the preacher's view of the matter, is it?" "Maybe not; and I ain't got a quarrel with 'em, the Lord knows. I go to church like clockwork, and pay my pew-rent, too, which is more than some do that gabble the most about salvation. If I pay for the preacher's keep it's only fair that I should get some of the good that comes to him hereafter; that's how it looks to me; so I don't trouble my head much about the ins and the outs of getting saved or damned. I've never puled in this world, thank God, and let come what will, I ain't going to begin puling in the next. But to go back to whar I started from, it all makes in the end for that pretty little chap over yonder in the dining-room. Rather puny for his years now, but as sound as a nut, and he'll grow, he'll grow. When his mother--poor, worthless drab--gave birth to him and died, I told her it was the best day's work she'd ever done." Carraway's humour rippled over. "It's easy to imagine what her answer must have been to such a pleasantry," he observed. "Oh, she was a fool, that woman--a born fool! Her answer was that it would be the best day for her only when I came to call it the worst. She hated me a long sight more than she hated the devil, and if she was to rise out of her grave to-day she'd probably start right in scrubbing for those darned Blakes." "Ah!" said Carraway. "It's the plain truth, but I don't visit it on the little lad. Why should I? He's got my name--I saw to that--and mark my word, he'll grow up yet to marry among the quality." The secret was out at last--Fletcher's purpose was disclosed, and even in the strong light of his past misdeeds it showed not without a hint of pathos. The very renouncement of any personal ambition served to invest the racial one with a kind of grandeur. "There's evidently an enviable career before him," said the lawyer at the end of a long pause, "and this brings me, by the way, to the question I wish to as--had your desire to see me any connection with the prospects of your grandson?"