“To tell you the truth, mother, I don’t trouble my head about such things. Philosophers are agreed that self-consciousness is the bane of the present age. Therefore, I mean to avoid it. If you had let me go into the army, I might have had some time to think about such matters, but that horrible bank takes everything out of me—except a burning desire to forget it at any cost till the time comes when I must endure it again. If I hadn’t some amusement in between, I would kill myself, or take to opium or drinking. I wonder how the governor would like to be in my place!”

Hester rose and left the room, indignant with him for speaking so of his father.

“If your father were in your place, Cornelius,” said his mother with dignity, “he would carry out his duties without grumbling, however irksome they might be.”

“How do you know that, mother? He never had such a job.”

“I know it because I know him,” she answered.

Cornelius gave a grunt.

“If you think it hard,” his mother resumed, “that you have to follow a way of life you did not choose, you must remember that we could get you to express no preference for anything. And your father had to strain everything to send you to college, with some hardship to the rest of the family. I am sorry to say it, but you did not make it any easier by your mode of living while there.”

“I didn’t run up a single bill!” cried Cornelius with indignation.

“Your father knows that. But he also knows that your cousin Robert did not spend two-thirds of what you did, and made more of his time.”

“He was in rather a different set,” sneered the youth.

“And you know too,” his mother went on, “that your father’s main design for placing you in your uncle’s bank was that you might gain a knowledge of the business that will help you to properly manage the money he will leave behind him. When you have gained that knowledge, there will be time to look for something else to do—you are young yet.”

His father’s money was a continual subject of annoyance to Cornelius, for it was no secret how he meant to dispose of it after he died. He intended, namely, to leave it under trustees, with his son as one of them until he married. At that time his estate was to be divided equally among his children, without any particular provision made for Cornelius.

The arrangement was an annoyance to Cornelius, who could see no advantage to him in being the eldest son of the family.

“Now, mother,” he said, “do you think it fair that I should have to look after the whole family as if they were my own?”

This was by no means his real cause of complaint, but he chose to use it as his grievance for the present.

“You will not be the only trustee,” said his mother. “It need not weigh on you.”