“No, I don’t suppose you have; but, luckily for you both, I am not so badly off, and I mean to do something for you. What do you think would be the proper thing? Come, Dorothy, my little housewife, what do you reckon you can live on—living here, I mean, for I suppose that you do not mean to run away and leave me alone in my old age, do you?” Dorothy wrinkled up her forehead as she used to as a child, and began to calculate upon her fingers. Presently she answered: “Three hundred a year comfortably, quietly on two.” “What!” said Mr. Cardus, “when the babies begin to come?” Dorothy blushed, old gentlemen are so unpleasantly out-spoken, and Ernest jumped, for the prospect of unlimited babies is alarming till one gets used to it. “Better make it five hundred,” he said. “Oh,” said Mr. Cardus, “that’s what you think, is it? Well, I tell you what I think. I am going to allow you young people two thousand a year and pay the housekeeping bills.” “My dear uncle, that is far more than we want.” “Nonsense, Ernest! it is there and to spare; and why should you not have it, instead of its piling up in the bank or in investments? There are enough of them now, I can tell you. Everything that I have touched has turned to gold; I believe it has often been the case with unfortunate men. Money! I have more than I know what to do with, and there are idiots who think that to have lots of money is to be happy.” He paused awhile and then went on: “I would give you more, but you are both comparatively young, and I do not wish to encourage habits of extravagance in you. The world is full of vicissitudes, and it is impossible for anybody to know how he may be pecuniarily situated in ten years’ time. But I wish you, Ernest, to keep up your rank—moderately, if you like, but still to keep it up. Life is all before you now, and whatever you choose to go in for, you shall not want the money to back you. Look here, my children, I may as well tell you that when I die you will inherit nearly all I have got; I have left it to be divided equally between you, with reversion to the survivor. I drew up that will some years back, and I do not think that it is worth while altering it now.” “Forgive me,” said Ernest, “but how about Jeremy?” Mr. Cardus’s face changed a little. He had never got over his dislike of Jeremy, though his sense of justice caused him to stifle it. “I have not forgotten Jeremy,” he said, in a tone that indicated that he did not wish to pursue the conversation. Ernest and Dorothy thanked the old man for his goodness, but he would not listen, so they went off and left him to return to his letter-writing. In the passage Dorothy peeped through the glass half of the door which opened into her grandfather’s room.