Whereupon George Peel talked to him persuasively and sensibly about the risks and the prizes of the sculptor’s career.  He explained just how extremely ambitious he was, and all that he had already done, and all that he intended to do.  And he convinced his uncle-in-law that young sculptors were tremendously handicapped in an expensive and difficult profession by poverty or at least narrowness of means.  He convinced his uncle-in-law that the best manner of succeeding was to begin at the top, to try for only the highest things, to sell nothing cheaply, to be haughty with dealers and connoisseurs, and to cut a figure in the very centre of the art-world of London.  George was a good talker, and all that he said was perfectly true.  And his uncle was dazzled by the immediate prospect of new fame for the ancient family of Peel.  And in the end old Samuel promised to give George and Mary five hundred a year, so that George, as a sculptor, might begin at the top and “succeed like success.”  And George went off with his bride to London, whence he had come.  And the old man thought he had done a very noble and a very wonderful thing, which, indeed, he had.

This had occurred when George was twenty-five.

Matters fell out rather as George had predicted.  The youth almost at once obtained a commission for three hundred pounds’ worth of symbolic statues for the front of the central offices of the Order of Rechabites, which particularly pleased his uncle, because Samuel Peel was a strong temperance man.  And George got one or two other commissions.

Being extravagant was to George Peel the same thing as “putting all the profits into the business” is to a manufacturer.  He was extravagant and ostentatious on principle, and by far-sighted policy—­or, at least, he thought that he was.

And thus the world’s rumours multiplied his success, and many persons said and believed that he was making quite two thousand a year, and would be an A.R.A. before he was grey-haired.  But George always related the true facts to his uncle-in-law; he even made them out to be much less satisfactory than they really were.  His favourite phrase in letters to his uncle was that he was “building,” “building”—­not houses, but his future reputation and success.

Then commissions fell off or grew intermittent, or were refused as being unworthy of George’s dignity.  And then young Georgie arrived, with his insatiable appetites and his vociferous need of doctors, nurses, perambulators, nurseries, and lacy garments.  And all the time young George’s father kept his head high and continued to be extravagant by far-sighted policy.  And the five hundred a year kept coming in regularly by quarterly instalments.  Many a tight morning George nearly decided that Mary must write to her uncle and ask for a little supplementary estimate.  But he never did decide, partly because he was afraid, and partly from sheer pride. (According to his original statements to his uncle-in-law, seven years earlier, he ought at this epoch to have been in an assured position with a genuine income of thousands.)