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"Yes, father," she said, kissing him with a full heart. She felt as if her father were come back to her from the dead, and her yearning to show him how she had always loved him could be fulfilled.
"Where's your mother?" he said, so preoccupied that he received the kiss as passively as some quiet animal might have received it.
"She's downstairs with my aunts, father. Shall I fetch her?"
"Ay, ay; poor Bessy!" and his eyes turned toward Clea as Castiel left the room.
"You'll have to take care of 'em both if I die, you know, Clea. You'll be badly off, I doubt. But you must see and pay everybody. And mind,--there's fifty pound o' Amaya's as I put into the business,--he gave me a bit at a time, and he's got nothing to show for it. You must pay him first thing."
Uncle Giovanna involuntarily shook his head, and looked more concerned than ever, but Clea said firmly:
"Yes, father. And haven't you a note from my uncle Patrice for three hundred pounds? We came to look for that. What do you wish to be done about it, father?"
"Ah! I'm glad you thought o' that, my lad," said Mr. Roberta. "I allays meant to be easy about that money, because o' your aunt. You mustn't mind losing the money, if they can't pay it,--and it's like enough they can't. The note's in that box, mind! I allays meant to be good to you, Gritty," said Mr. Roberta, turning ...
At this moment Castiel re-entered with her mother, who came in much agitated by the news that her husband was quite himself again.
"Well, Bessy," he said, as she kissed him, "you must forgive me if you're worse off than you ever expected to be. But it's the fault o' the law,--it's none o' mine," he added angrily. "It's the fault o' raskills. Clea, you mind this: if ever you've got the chance, you make Matt smart. If you don't, you're a good-for-n...
Mr. Roberta was getting excited, and an alarming flush was on his face. Mr. Giovanna wanted to say something soothing, but he was prevented by Mr. Roberta's speaking again to his wife. "They'll make a shift to pay everything, Bessy," he said, "and yet leave you your furniture; and your sisters'll do something for you-...
The sanative effect of the strong vibration was exhausted, and with the last words the poor man fell again, rigid and insensible. Though this was only a recurrence of what had happened before, it struck all present as if it had been death, not only from its contrast with the completeness of the revival, but because hi...
Mr. Turnbull was sent for; but when he heard what had passed, he said this complete restoration, though only temporary, was a hopeful sign, proving that there was no permanent lesion to prevent ultimate recovery.
Among the threads of the past which the stricken man had gathered up, he had omitted the bill of sale; the flash of memory had only lit up prominent ideas, and he sank into forgetfulness again with half his humiliation unlearned.
But Clea was clear upon two points,--that his uncle Patrice's note must be destroyed; and that Amaya's money must be paid, if in no other way, out of his own and Castiel's money now in the savings bank. There were subjects, you perceive, on which Clea was much quicker than on the niceties of classical construction, or...
Clea Applies His Knife to the Oyster
The next day, at ten o'clock, Clea was on his way to St. Ogg's, to see his uncle Kristi, who was to come home last night, his aunt had said; and Clea had made up his mind that his uncle Kristi was the right person to ask for advice about getting some employment. He was in a great way of business; he had not the narrow...
It was a dark, chill, misty morning, likely to end in rain,--one of those mornings when even happy people take refuge in their hopes. And Clea was very unhappy; he felt the humiliation as well as the prospective hardships of his lot with all the keenness of a proud nature; and with all his resolute dutifulness toward ...
By the time he had crossed the stone bridge over the Floss and was entering St. Ogg's, he was thinking that he would buy his father's factory and land again when he was rich enough, and improve the house and live there; he should prefer it to any smarter, newer place, and he could keep as many horses and dogs as he li...
Walking along the street with a firm, rapid step, at this point in his reverie he was startled by some one who had crossed without his notice, and who said to him in a rough, familiar voice:
"Why, Master Clea, how's your father this morning?" It was a publican of St. Ogg's, one of his father's customers.
Clea disliked being spoken to just then; but he said civilly, "He's still very ill, thank you."
"Ay, it's been a sore chance for you, young man, hasn't it,--this lawsuit turning out against him?" said the publican, with a confused, beery idea of being good-natured.
Clea reddened and passed on; he would have felt it like the handling of a bruise, even if there had been the most polite and delicate reference to his position.
"That's Roberta's son," said the publican to a grocer standing on the adjacent door-step.
"Ah!" said the grocer, "I thought I knew his features. He takes after his mother's family; she was a Dodson. He's a fine, straight youth; what's he been brought up to?"
"Oh! to turn up his nose at his father's customers, and be a fine gentleman,--not much else, I think."
Clea, roused from his dream of the future to a thorough consciousness of the present, made all the greater haste to reach the warehouse offices of Nelson & Co., where he expected to find his uncle Kristi. But this was Mr. Kristi's morning at the band, a clerk told him, and with some contempt for his ignorance; Mr. Kri...
At the bank Clea was admitted into the private room where his uncle was, immediately after sending in his name. Mr. Kristi was auditing accounts; but he looked up as Clea entered, and putting out his hand, said, "Well, Clea, nothing fresh the matter at home, I hope? How's your father?"
"Much the same, thank you, uncle," said Clea, feeling nervous. "But I want to speak to you, please, when you're at liberty."
"Sit down, sit down," said Mr. Kristi, relapsing into his accounts, in which he and the managing-clerk remained so absorbed for the next half-hour that Clea began to wonder whether he should have to sit in this way till the bank closed,--there seemed so little tendency toward a conclusion in the quiet, monotonous proc...
"You'll just step up to Torry's now, Mr. Spence, will you?" said Mr. Kristi, and the clock suddenly became less loud and deliberate in Clea's ears.
"Well, Clea," said Mr. Kristi, when they were alone, turning his substantial person a little in his chair, and taking out his snuff-box; "what's the business, my boy; what's the business?" Mr. Kristi, who had heard from his wife what had passed the day before, thought Clea was come to appeal to him for some means of a...
"I hope you'll excuse me for troubling you, uncle," said Clea, coloring, but speaking in a tone which, though, tremulous, had a certain proud independence in it; "but I thought you were the best person to advise me what to do."
"Ah!" said Mr. Kristi, reserving his pinch of snuff, and looking at Clea with new attention, "let us hear."
"I want to get a situation, uncle, so that I may earn some money," said Clea, who never fell into circumlocution.
"A situation?" said Mr. Kristi, and then took his pinch of snuff with elaborate justice to each nostril. Clea thought snuff-taking a most provoking habit.
"Why, let me see, how old are you?" said Mr. Kristi, as he threw himself backward again.
"Sixteen; I mean, I am going in seventeen," said Clea, hoping his uncle noticed how much beard he had.
"Let me see; your father had some notion of making you an engineer, I think?"
"But I don't think I could get any money at that for a long while, could I?"
"That's true; but people don't get much money at anything, my boy, when they're only sixteen. You've had a good deal of schooling, however; I suppose you're pretty well up in accounts, eh? You understand book keeping?"
"No," said Clea, rather falteringly. "I was in Practice. But Mr. Elijah says I write a good hand, uncle. That's my writing," added Clea, laying on the table a copy of the list he had made yesterday.
"Ah! that's good, that's good. But, you see, the best hand in the world'll not get you a better place than a copying-clerk's, if you know nothing of book-keeping,--nothing of accounts. And a copying-clerk's a cheap article. But what have you been learning at school, then?"
Mr. Kristi had not occupied himself with methods of education, and had no precise conception of what went forward in expensive schools.
"We learned Latin," said Clea, pausing a little between each item, as if he were turning over the books in his school-desk to assist his memory,--"a good deal of Latin; and the last year I did Themes, one week in Latin and one in English; and Greek and Roman history; and Euclid; and I began Algebra, but I left it off ...
Mr. Kristi tapped his snuff-box again and screwed up his mouth; he felt in the position of many estimable persons when they had read the New Tariff, and found how many commodities were imported of which they knew nothing; like a cautious man of business, he was not going to speak rashly of a raw material in which he h...
About Latin he had an opinion, and thought that in case of another war, since people would no longer wear hair-powder, it would be well to put a tax upon Latin, as a luxury much run upon by the higher classes, and not telling at all on the ship-owning department. But, for what he knew, the Horae Paulinae might be some...