Mr. Bulstrode, alone with his brother-in-law, poured himself out a glass of water, and opened a sandwich-box.
“I cannot persuade you to adopt my regimen, Vincy?”
“No, no; I’ve no opinion of that system. Life wants padding,” said Mr. Vincy, unable to omit his portable theory.
“However,” he went on, accenting the word, as if to dismiss all irrelevance, “what I came here to talk about was a little affair of my young scapegrace, Fred’s.”
“That is a subject on which you and I are likely to take quite as different views as on diet, Vincy.”
“I hope not this time.” ( Mr. Vincy was resolved to be good-humored.) “The fact is, it’s about a whim of old Featherstone’s. Somebody has been cooking up a story out of spite, and telling it to the old man, to try to set him against Fred. He’s very fond of Fred, and is likely to do something handsome for him; indeed he has as good as told Fred that he means to leave him his land, and that makes other people jealous.”
“Vincy, I must repeat, that you will not get any concurrence from me as to the course you have pursued with your eldest son. It was entirely from worldly vanity that you destined him for the Church: with a family of three sons and four daughters, you were not warranted in devoting money to an expensive education which has succeeded in nothing but in giving him extravagant idle habits. You are now reaping the consequences.”
To point out other people’s errors was a duty that Mr. Bulstrode rarely shrank from, but Mr. Vincy was not equally prepared to be patient.