What could he add
to it? He had been called to the Bar, but had never practised.
Directorships no doubt, he might get, like other men; though not so
easily now, if it was to be known that his mother meant to make a pauper
of him. And once a man whom he had met in political life, who was no
doubt ignorant of his private circumstances, had sounded him as to
whether he would become the London correspondent of a great American
paper. He had laughed then, good-humoredly, at the proposal. Perhaps the
thing might still be open. It would mean a few extra hundreds.
He laughed again as he thought of it, but not good-humoredly. The whole
thing was so monstrous! His mother had close on twenty thousand a year!
For all her puritanical training she liked luxury--of a certain
kind--and had brought up her son in it. Marsham had never gambled or
speculated or raced. It was part of his democratic creed and his Quaker
Ancestry to despise such modes of wasting money, and to be scornful of
the men who indulged in them. But the best of housing, service, and
clothes; the best shooting, whether in England or Scotland; the best
golfing, fishing, and travelling: all these had come to him year after
year since his boyhood, without question.
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