When they were alone in the library at night, Morton spoke of his eldest boy, expressing some anxiety about him.

’The rascal will have to earn his living —­ and how?  There’s time, I suppose, but it begins to fidget me.  He won’t handle corn —­ I’m clear as to that.  At his age, of course, all lads talk about voyages and so on, but Harry seems cut out for a larger sphere than Greystone.  I shan’t balk him.  I’d rather he hadn’t anything to do with fighting —­ still, that’s a weakness.’

‘We think of sending Wager’s lad into the navy,’ said Rolfe, when he had mused awhile.  ‘Of course, he’ll have to make his own way.’

‘Best thing you can do, no doubt.  And what about his little sister?’

’That’s more troublesome.  It’s awkward that she’s a relative of Mrs Abbott.  Otherwise, I should have proposed to train her for a cook.’

‘Do you mean it?’

’Why not?  She isn’t a girl of any promise.  What better thing for her, and for the community, than to make her a good cook?  They’re rare enough, Heaven knows.  What’s the use of letting her grow up with ideas of gentility, which in her case would mean nothing hut uselessness?  She must support herself, sooner or later, and it won’t he with her brains.  I’ve seriously thought of making that suggestion to Mrs. Abbott.  Ten years hence, a sensible woman cook will demand her own price, and be a good deal more respected than a dressmaker or a she-clerk.  The stomach is very powerful in bringing people to common-sense.  When all the bricklayers’ daughters are giving piano lessons, and it’s next to impossible to get any servant except a lady’s-maid, we shall see women of leisure develop a surprising interest in the boiling of potatoes.’

Morton admitted the force of these arguments.

‘What would you wish your own boy to be?’ he asked presently.

’Anything old-fashioned, unadventurous, happily obscure; a country parson, perhaps, best of all.’

’I understand.  I’ve had the same thoughts.  But one Ii to get over that kind of thing.  It won’t do to be afraid of life —­ nor of death either.’

‘And there’s the difficulty of education,’ said Rolfe.  ’If I followed my instincts, I should make the boy unfit for anything but the quietest, obscurest life.  I should make him hate a street, and love the fields.  I should teach him to despise every form of ambition; to shrink from every kind of pleasure, but the simplest and purest; to think of life as a long day’s ramble, and death as the quiet sleep that comes at the end of it.  I should like him not to marry —­ never to feel the need of it; or if marry he must, to have no children.  That’s my real wish; and if I tried to carry it out, the chances are that I should do him an intolerable wrong.  For fear of it, I must give him into the hands of other people; I must see him grow into habits and thoughts which will cause me perpetual uneasiness; I must watch him drift further and further away from my own ideal of life, till at length, perhaps, there is scarce a possibility of sympathy between us.’