I don't say we have all done the right thing
with this money, I'm sure I have not, and most likely it serves us
right to lose it, but to have mother teased about what, after all,
was chiefly owing to her absence, is more than I will stand. The one
duty in hand is to make the best of it for her. I shall run down
again as soon as I hear how this is likely to turn out—-for Sunday,
perhaps. Keep up a good heart, Babie Bunting, and whatever you do,
don't let him worry mother. Good-bye, Armie! What's the use of
being good, if you can't hold up against a thing like this?"
"Jock doesn't know," said Armine, as the door closed. "Fads indeed!"
"Jock didn't mean that," pleaded Babie. "You know he did not; dear,
good Jock, he could not!"
"Jock is a good fellow, but he lives a frivolous, self-indulgent
life, and has got infected with the spirit and the language," said
Armine, "or he would understand that myself or my own loss is the
very last thing I am troubled about. No, indeed, I should never
think of that! It is the ruin of these poor people and all I meant
to have done for them. It is very strange that we should only be
allowed to waken to a sense of our opportunities to have them taken
away from us!"
No one would have expected Armine, always regarded as the most
religious of the family, to be the most dismayed, and neither he nor
Barbara could detect how much of the spoilt child lay at the bottom
of his regrets; but his little sister's sympathy enabled him to keep
from troubling his mother with his lamentations.
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