But twenty-four hours later, my 'Mother's Misfortune' was tokened to
Minnie Parable, and when the Dowager died, of course the money came
Rupert's way.
Strange to relate, it was a tolerable happy marriage as such things go.
They bore with one another pretty fair, and though you couldn't say it was
a homely pattern of home, and struck shivers into most folk as saw it, it
suited them. She never put no poison in Rupert's tea, and he never cut her
throat nor nothing like that. One child they had and no more; and he'll
get his grandfather's little lot when I don't want it, and John'll get
mine.
Rupert's child weren't one for a Christmas card exactly; but they set a
lot of store by him. Minnie saw through it, of course, when the Dowager
died; but she'd got Rupert which was what mattered to her, and she knew
the money was bound to goody all right in her husband's hands; which it
did do.
No. VII
STEADFAST SAMUEL
Samuel Borlase was one of them rare childer who see his calling fixed in
his little mind from cradlehood. We all know that small boys have big
ideas and that they fasten on the business of grown-up people and decide,
each according to his fancy, how he be going to help the world's work come
he grows up. This child hopes to be a chimney-sweep, and this longs to be
a railway-porter; scores trust to follow the sea and dozens wish for to be
a soldier, or a 'bus-conductor, a gardener, or a road-cleaner, as the
ambition takes 'em.
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