The Spinners | Page 6

as I happen to know, Daniel, you always spoke with patience and reason about Raymond--your father has told me so. It was natural and wise, therefore, that my late dear friend should have left Raymond to you."
"I only want to do my duty," said the young man. "By stopping away to-day Raymond hasn't made me feel any kinder to him, and if he were not so stupid in some ways, he must have known it would be so; but I am not going to let that weigh against him. How do you read the fact that my father directs Raymond's allowance to cease, Uncle Ernest?"
Mr. Churchouse bore no real connection to the Ironsydes; but his relations had always been close and cordial after he relinquished his share in the business of the mills, and the younger generation was brought up to call him 'uncle.'
"I read it like this," answered the elder. "It means that Raymond is to look to you in future, and that henceforth you may justly demand that he should not live in idleness. There is nothing more demoralising for youth than to live upon money it doesn't earn. I should say--subject to your aunt's opinion, to which I attach the greatest importance--that it is your place to give your brother an interest in life and to show him, what you know already, the value and dignity of work."
"I entirely agree," said Jenny Ironsyde. "I can go further and declare from personal knowledge that my brother had shadowed the idea in his mind."
They both regarded Daniel.
"Then leave it there," he bade them, "leave it there and I'll think it out. My father was the fairest man I ever met, and I'll try and be as fair. It's up to Raymond more than me."
"You can bring a horse to the water, though you can't make him drink," admitted Mr. Churchouse. "But if you bring your horse to the water, you've done all that reason and sense may ask you to do."
Miss Ironsyde, from larger knowledge of the circumstances, felt disposed to carry the question another step. She opened her mouth and drew in her breath to speak--making that little preliminary sound only audible when nothing follows it. But she did not speak.
"Come into the garden and see Magnolia grandiflora," said Mr. Churchouse. "There are twelve magnificent blossoms open this morning, and I should have picked every one of them for my dear friend's grave, only the direction was clear, that there were to be no flowers."
"Henry disliked any attempt to soften the edges at such a time," explained the dead man's sister. "He held that death was the skeleton at the feast of life--a wholesome and stark reminder to the thoughtless living that the grave is the end of our mortal days. He liked a funeral to be a funeral--black--black. He did not want the skeleton at the feast to be decked in roses and lilies."
"An opinion worthy of all respect," declared Mr. Churchouse.
Then he asked after the health of his guest and expressed sympathy for her sorrow and great loss.
"He'd been so much better lately that it was a shock," she said, "but he died as he wanted to die--as all Ironsydes do die--without an illness. It is a tradition that never seems to fail. That reconciled us in a way. And you--how are you? You seldom come to Bridport nowadays."
Mr. Churchouse rarely talked about himself.
"True. I have been immersed in literary work and getting on with my magnum opus: 'The Church Bells of Dorset.' You see one does not obtain much help here--no encouragement. Not that I expect it. We men of letters have to choose between being hermits, or humbugs."
"I always thought a hermit was a humbug," said Jenny, smiling for the first time.
"Not always. When I say 'hermit,' I mean 'recluse.' With all the will to be a social success and identify myself with the welfare of the place in which I dwell, my powers are circumscribed. Do not think I put myself above the people, or pretend any intellectual superiority, or any nonsense of that sort. No, it is merely a question of time and energy. My antiquarian work demands both, and so I am deprived by duty from mixing in the social life as much as I wish. This is not, perhaps, understood, and so I get a character for aloofness, which is not wholly deserved."
"Don't worry," said Miss Ironsyde. "Everybody cares for you. People don't think about us and our doings half as much as we are prone to fancy. I liked your last article in the Bridport Gazette. Only I seemed to have read most of it before."
"Probably you have. The facts, of course, were common property. My task is to collect data and retail them in a luminous and illuminating