I told him he'd nothing to look for from me, for
his father is richer than I am nowadays; but he's just the sort to like
vagary."
Jim went home, and Caius began a simple round of home duties. His father
needed much attendance; the farm servants needed direction. Caius soon
found out, without being told, that neither in one capacity nor the
other did he fulfil the old man's pleasure nearly so well as the
rough-and-ready Jim. Even his mother hardly let a day pass without
innocently alluding to some prank of Jim's that had amused her. She
would have been very angry if anyone had told her that she did not find
her son as good a companion. Caius did not tell her so, but he was
perfectly aware of it.
Caius had not been long at home when his cousin Mabel came to visit
them. This time his mother made no sly remarks concerning Mabel's reason
for timing her visit, because it seemed that Mabel had paid a long and
comforting visit while he had been at the Magdalen Islands. Mabel did
not treat Caius now with the unconscious flattery of blind admiration,
neither did she talk to him about Jim; but her silence whenever Jim's
name was mentioned was eloquent.
Caius summed all this up in his own mind. He and Jim had commenced life
as lads together. The one had trodden the path of virtue and laudable
ambition; the other had just amused himself, and that in many
reprehensible ways; and now, when the ripe age of manhood was attained
in that state of life to which--as the Catechism would have it--it had
pleased God to call them, it was Jim who was the useful and honoured
man, not Caius.
Pages:
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290