"Few men besides you would think it a duty to add to their anxieties in
that way, Caleb."
"That signifies nothing--what other men would think. I've got a clear
feeling inside me, and that I shall follow; and I hope your heart will
go with me, Susan, in making everything as light as can be to Mary,
poor child."
Caleb, leaning back in his chair, looked with anxious appeal towards
his wife. She rose and kissed him, saying, "God bless you, Caleb! Our
children have a good father."
But she went out and had a hearty cry to make up for the suppression of
her words. She felt sure that her husband's conduct would be
misunderstood, and about Fred she was rational and unhopeful. Which
would turn out to have the more foresight in it--her rationality or
Caleb's ardent generosity?
When Fred went to the office the next morning, there was a test to be
gone through which he was not prepared for.
"Now Fred," said Caleb, "you will have some desk-work. I have always
done a good deal of writing myself, but I can't do without help, and as
I want you to understand the accounts and get the values into your
head, I mean to do without another clerk. So you must buckle to. How
are you at writing and arithmetic?"
Fred felt an awkward movement of the heart; he had not thought of
desk-work; but he was in a resolute mood, and not going to shrink.
"I'm not afraid of arithmetic, Mr. Garth: it always came easily to me.
I think you know my writing."
"Let us see," said Caleb, taking up a pen, examining it carefully and
handing it, well dipped, to Fred with a sheet of ruled paper. "Copy me
a line or two of that valuation, with the figures at the end."
At that time the opinion existed that it was beneath a gentleman to
write legibly, or with a hand in the least suitable to a clerk. Fred
wrote the lines demanded in a hand as gentlemanly as that of any
viscount or bishop of the day: the vowels were all alike and the
consonants only distinguishable as turning up or down, the strokes had
a blotted solidity and the letters disdained to keep the line--in
short, it was a manuscript of that venerable kind easy to interpret
when you know beforehand what the writer means.
As Caleb looked on, his visage showed a growing depression, but when
Fred handed him the paper he gave something like a snarl, and rapped
the paper passionately with the back of his hand. Bad work like this
dispelled all Caleb's mildness.