It was the fact of his son's being the
richer man of the two, and of his being rich so young, which rankled
with Theobald even more than the fact of his having money at all. If
he had had to wait till he was sixty or sixty-five, and become
broken down from long failure in the meantime, why then perhaps he
might have been allowed to have whatever sum should suffice to keep
him out of the workhouse and pay his death-bed expenses; but that he
should come in to L70,000 at eight-and-twenty, and have no wife and
only two children- it was intolerable. Christina was too ill and in
too great a hurry to spend the money to care much about such details
as the foregoing, and she was naturally much more good-natured than
Theobald.
"This piece of good fortune"- she saw it at a glance- "quite wiped
out the disgrace of his having been imprisoned. There should be no
more nonsense about that. The whole thing was a mistake, an
unfortunate mistake, true, but the less said about it now the
better. Of course Ernest would come back and live at Battersby until
he was married, and he would pay his father handsomely for board and
lodging. In fact it would be only right that Theobald should make a
profit, nor would Ernest himself wish it to be other than a handsome
one; this was far the best and simplest arrangement; and he could take
his sister out more than Theobald or Joey cared to do, and would
also doubtless entertain very handsomely at Battersby.
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