It is in nature that the
old man should keep the purse in his own pocket, or otherwise he will
have so little to attract. He is weak, querulous, ugly to look at, apt
to be greedy, cross, and untidy. Though he himself can love, what is his
love to any one? Duty demands that one shall smooth his pillow, and some
one does smooth it,--as a duty. But the old man feels the difference, and
remembers the time when there was one who was anxious to share it.
Mr. Prosper was not in years an old man, and had not as yet passed that
time of life at which many a man is regarded by his children as the best
of their playfellows. But he was weak in body, self-conscious, and
jealous in spirit. He had the heart to lay out for himself a generous
line of conduct, but not the purpose to stick to it steadily. His nephew
had ever been a trouble to him, because he had expected from his nephew
a kind of worship to which he had felt that he was entitled as the head
of the family. All good things were to come from him, and therefore good
things should be given to him. Harry had told himself that his uncle was
not his father, and that it had not been his fault that he was his
uncle's heir. He had not asked his uncle for an allowance. He had grown
up with the feeling that Buston Hall was to be his own, and had not
regarded his uncle as the donor.
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