Spring Days | Page 7

were generally monosyllabic. As he chewed his meat with reflection
and precaution, broke his bread with deliberate and well- defined
movements, and filled his mouth with carefully chosen pieces, he
gradually ventured to decide that he would not speak to his father that
evening of the scheme he had been hatching for some months. It was
one of his strictest rules not to think while eating, so it may be said that

it was against his will that he arrived at this conclusion. Willy suffered
from indigestion, and he knew that any exercise of the brain was most
prejudicial at meal times.
After dinner Mr. Brookes and his son retired to the billiard-room to
smoke.
"Your sisters are a great trouble to me--a very great anxiety. Since your
poor mother died I've had no peace, none whatever. Poor Julia, she's
gone; I shall never see her again."
Willy made no answer. He was debating; he was still uncertain whether
the present time could be considered a favourable one to introduce his
scheme to his father's notice, and he had made up his mind that it was,
when he was interrupted by Mr. Brookes, who had again lapsed into
one of his semi-soliloquies.
"Your sisters give me a great deal of trouble, a very great deal of
anxiety. I am all alone. I have no one to help me since the death of your
poor mother."
"My sisters are fitted for nothing but pleasure," Willy replied severely.

II

Mr. Brookes went to London every day by the five minutes to ten;
Willy walked into Brighton. There he had been for some time striving
to found an agency for artificial manures, and in the twilight of a small
office he brooded over the different means of making money that were
open to him. The young ladies worked or played as it struck their fancy.
Sally admitted that she infinitely preferred walking round the garden
with a young man to doing wool-work in the drawing-room. Maggie
shared this taste, although she did not make bold profession of it. Grace
was the gentlest of the sisters, and had passed unnoticed until she had
fallen in love with a penniless officer, and tortured her father with tears

and haggard cheeks because he refused to supply her with money to
keep a husband. The doctor had ordered her iron; she had been sent to
London for a change, but neither remedy was of much avail, and when
she returned home pale and melancholy she had not taken the keys
from Maggie, but had allowed her to usurp her place inthe house. Sally
was supposed to look after the conservatories, but beyond her own
special flowers she left everything to the gardeners.
On Sundays Mr. Brookes walked through the long drawing-rooms
aimlessly. Sometimes he would stop before one of his pictures. "There,
that's a good picture, I paid a lot of money for it, I paid too much,
mustn't do so again." Passing his daughters, sometimes without
speaking, he then stopped before one of the big chimney-pieces, and,
pulling out his large silk pocket handkerchief, dusted the massive
clocks and candlesticks.
In the billiard-room, at a table drawn up close to the coke fire, Willy
slowly and with much care made pencil notes, which he slowly and
with great solemnity copied into his diary.
"Your sisters are a great source of trouble to me, a source of deep
anxiety," said Mr. Brookes, and he flicked the rearing legs of a bronze
horse with his handkerchief.
"My sisters are only fit for pleasure," said Willy and he finished the tail
of the y, passed the blotting paper over, and prepared to begin a fresh
paragraph.
"I am afraid Grace is scarcely any better; she will not leave her room. I
hear she is crying. It is too ridiculous, too ridiculous. What she can see
in that man I can't think; he is only a man of pleasure. I've told her so,
but somehow she can't get to see why I will not settle money upon
her--money that I made myself, by hard work, judicious investments."
"That's a smack at the shop," thought Willy, as he placed his full stop.
"I'll not settle my money upon her," said Mr. Brookes, as he resumed
his dusting; "and for what? to keep an idle fellow in idleness. No, I'll

not do it. She'll get over it--ah, it will be all the same a hundred years
hence. But tell me, have you noticed--no, you notice nothing--"
"Yes, I do; what do you want me to say, that she is looking very ill? I
can't help it if she is. I've quite enough troubles of my own without
thinking of other people's. I'm sure I am very sorry. I wish she'd never
met the