Page:The way of all flesh (IA wayofallflesh01butl).pdf/391

 This was not what he had bargained for. He wanted Ernest to return, but he was to return as any respectable, well-regulated prodigal ought to return—abject, broken-hearted, asking forgiveness from the tenderest and most long-suffering father in the whole world. If he should have shoes and stockings and whole clothes at all, it should be only because absolute rags and tatters had been graciously dispensed with, whereas here he was swaggering in a grey ulster and a blue and white necktie, and looking better than Theobald had ever seen him in his life. It was unprincipled. Was it for this that he had been generous enough to offer to provide Ernest with decent clothes in which to come and visit his mother's death-bed? Could any advantage be meaner than the one which Ernest had taken? Well, he would not go a penny beyond the eight or nine pounds which he had promised. It was fortunate he had given a limit. Why he, Theobald, had never been able to afford such a portmanteau in his life. He was still using an old one which his father had turned over to him when he went up to Cambridge. Besides, he had said clothes, not a portmanteau.

Ernest saw what was passing through his father's mind, and felt that he ought to have prepared him in some way for what he now saw; but he had sent his telegram so immediately on receiving his father's letter, and had followed it so promptly that it would not have been easy to do so even if he had thought of it. He put out his hand and said laughingly, "Oh, it's all paid for—I am afraid you do not know that Mr Overton has handed over to me Aunt Alethea's money."

Theobald flushed scarlet. "But why," he said, and these were the first words that actually crossed his lips—"if the money was not his to keep, did he not hand it over to my brother John and me?" He stammered a good deal and looked sheepish, but he got the words out.

"Because, my dear father," said Ernest still laughing, "my aunt left it to him in trust for me, not in trust either for you or for my Uncle John—and it has accumulated till it is now over £70,000. But tell me how is my mother?"