The Woodlanders - Page 72/314

"Sit down, Grace, and keep me company," he said. "You may amuse

yourself by looking over these." He threw out a heap of papers before

her.

"What are they?" she asked.

"Securities of various sorts." He unfolded them one by one. "Papers

worth so much money each. Now here's a lot of turnpike bonds for one

thing. Would you think that each of these pieces of paper is worth two

hundred pounds?"

"No, indeed, if you didn't say so."

"'Tis so, then. Now here are papers of another sort. They are for

different sums in the three-per-cents. Now these are Port Breedy

Harbor bonds. We have a great stake in that harbor, you know, because

I send off timber there. Open the rest at your pleasure. They'll

interest ye."

"Yes, I will, some day," said she, rising.

"Nonsense, open them now. You ought to learn a little of such matters.

A young lady of education should not be ignorant of money affairs

altogether. Suppose you should be left a widow some day, with your

husband's title-deeds and investments thrown upon your hands--"

"Don't say that, father--title-deeds; it sounds so vain!"

"It does not. Come to that, I have title-deeds myself. There, that

piece of parchment represents houses in Sherton Abbas."

"Yes, but--" She hesitated, looked at the fire, and went on in a low

voice: "If what has been arranged about me should come to anything, my

sphere will be quite a middling one."

"Your sphere ought not to be middling," he exclaimed, not in passion,

but in earnest conviction. "You said you never felt more at home, more

in your element, anywhere than you did that afternoon with Mrs.

Charmond, when she showed you her house and all her knick-knacks, and

made you stay to tea so nicely in her drawing-room--surely you did!"

"Yes, I did say so," admitted Grace.

"Was it true?"

"Yes, I felt so at the time. The feeling is less strong now, perhaps."

"Ah! Now, though you don't see it, your feeling at the time was the

right one, because your mind and body were just in full and fresh

cultivation, so that going there with her was like meeting like. Since

then you've been biding with us, and have fallen back a little, and so

you don't feel your place so strongly. Now, do as I tell ye, and look

over these papers and see what you'll be worth some day. For they'll

all be yours, you know; who have I got to leave 'em to but you?

Perhaps when your education is backed up by what these papers

represent, and that backed up by another such a set and their owner,

men such as that fellow was this morning may think you a little more

than a buffer's girl."