Why are you
visiting here, instead of looking after your house and lands? Oh! it's
only three-and-twenty miles from this; and you're going to look after
it to-day, by the next train? Quite right. And--what? what?--coming back
again the day after to-morrow? Why should you come back? Some special
attraction here, I suppose? I hope it's the right sort of attraction.
You're very young--you're exposed to all sorts of temptations. Have you
got a solid foundation of good sense at the bottom of you? It is not
inherited from your poor father, if you have. You must have been a mere
boy when he ruined his children's prospects. How have you lived from
that time to this? What were you doing when your aunt's will made an
idle man of you for life?"
The question was a searching one. Arnold answered it, without the
slightest hesitation; speaking with an unaffected modesty and simplicity
which at once won Sir Patrick's heart.
"I was a boy at Eton, Sir," he said, "when my father's losses ruined
him. I had to leave school, and get my own living; and I have got it,
in a roughish way, from that time to this. In plain English, I have
followed the sea--in the merchant-service.
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